Until high school, I had no experiences with technology outside of the classroom. Then my family got a computer and dial-up Internet service from AOL. I became interested in making websites and blogs (these days I post on and read posts at a livejournal group for Elementary Education majors) and have made increasingly more advanced pages- first using free services with templates and then working from the templates to learn more about HTML programming language. More recently I have become experienced with the program Ulead PhotoImpact, which is similar to Adobe Photoshop and allows one to manipulate digital photographs and other images. I am still the only one in my family who uses the computer and Internet. In college I use a Macintosh iBook, so I’ve had to learn to use a slightly different OS. I most commonly use computers for e-mail and writing papers, but it is probably telling of the fact that I’m a college student that my favorite programs on my iBook are iTunes and AIM!
I learned to work with computers in elementary and middle school, at first mostly by playing games and using Paint, and by high school was experienced enough to teach others basic computing skills. In high school I attended the Roanoke Valley Governor’s School for Science and Technology, a half-day program which accepts students from area public high schools. In the morning, I took computer, science, and math classes at the Governor’s School, where I used much more technology than I would have gotten to use at Staunton River. All first-year Governor’s School students are required to take Computer Applications and Technologies. In this class my basic skills were refined when it came to using search engines, Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and HTML and I was introduced to the creation of JAVA applets and the concept of a Local Area Network. Technology was integrated into everything we did in our science and math classes, from using computers in an interface with calculators and chemistry instruments such as titrators to using mass spectroscopers and chromotographers. For some classes, we had to use the Internet to get our homework questions or handouts for classes, similar to UVa's Toolkit. The Governor’s School is also equipped with SmartBoard technology.
Here's a link to a picture of me with one of my favorite teachers, Gwen Sibert, at an RVGS Project Forum. She was very influential in my decision to be an educator and a big advocate of technology in schools, as you can tell by her awesome virtual classroom. This next link doesn't really involve technology, but look, it's me measuring a plant!
At my home high school, Staunton River, there is a computer lab and 16 PC's and 30 laptops for students to use (with teacher permission as part of a class activity), but the only class in which computer technology was used daily was my journalism class, which used Adobe PageMaker. I also used PageMaker as a co-editor of the school lit mag.
In many cases in today’s schools the students are just as technologically-savvy, or more so, than their instructors. If technology is made more of an everyday part of school, students will be more excited about learning- at Governor’s School such opportunities could make a laboratory experiment seem much less boring. Students who tune out of lectures with overhead transparencies pay attention to video clips and hands-on use of technology. One of my biggest concerns is the problem of “Old-Fashioned” teachers who are so concerned about plagirism that they don’t allow students to use the Internet for research. This gives technology a stigma, associating the Internet with mistrust.
Friday, September 10, 2004
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