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Lone Star 2000: Documenting Successful School or University Teaching and Learning
Fletcher Middle School participants used Columbus: Encounter,
Discovery and Beyond. This highly interactive, multimedia-laden
program from IBM allows students in grades 6-8 to discover the people,
places and events, art, history, culture and science of the Renaissance
and investigate the influences these events had on North American
history and culture.
Participants at both schools used LinkWay Live! -- an easily learned
multimedia presentation tool that allows students and teachers to
present subject matter of any kind in a creative electronic format.
Content can include text, sound, graphics and incorporate video input
from a videodisc player or VCR.
Outcomes, So Far
During the semester, two teachers received awards from the Duval
Educational Foundation, Inc. Their awards supported the goals of the
project. To assist the first-grade teachers with computer-based
instruction for their students, Cheryl Claxton facilitated the training of
nine parent volunteers to help students with the computer courseware.
Lynda Dresch received funds to purchase supplemental mathematics
materials to accompany the Math and More I courseware.
UNF interns produced LinkWay Live! folders that demonstrated their
skills in using the technology. Included were pictures of themselves,
their students, the school, their resumes and credentials, spoken
commentary, and selected examples of work produced by their students.
With the cooperation of a classroom parent, Shelley Cain, one
first-grade teacher’s assistant, Connie Mickelson, created a system to
track student progress on the mathematics curriculum courseware. This
system was a valuable tool for interns and teachers in tracking students’
progress, helping evaluate the courseware’s effectiveness on student
learning.
Summary
Throughout the semester, the university-school partnership produced
structured, supervised classroom experiences for pre- service teachers,
which included uses of educational technologies and portfolios to
document successful teaching and learning. The partnership enabled
the participants to work toward goals that resulted in enduring
innovations, affecting the way teachers and interns taught, and
students learned. The partnership also provided a framework for
restructuring the teacher-education program and strengthened school
programs and curricula.
The Lone Star 2000 partnership enabled participants to discover that
when groups composed of corporations, university and public school
personnel work together within partner schools, barriers come down;
visions and perspectives change; and the corporations, schools and the
university are opened to permanent change.
