December 2006 — Features
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2006 Innovators
A HISTORY TEACHER uses a computer game to interest students in World
War II. A former TV reporter creates a new journalism curriculum that turns
high school kids into real on-air broadcasters. An administrator and a technology
coordinator team up to bring their campuses in contact with others
around the world. A project director devises a vocational IT training program
for high schoolers. An ESL teacher boosts English literacy by getting free
computers and DSL service into the homes of immigrant students.
What thread links all of these educators? They are difference makers, and in the past year they have demonstrated the power of educational technology to transform teaching and learning. For their achievements, they are among a select group, chosen by our panel from roughly 200 nominees: T.H.E. Journal’s 2006 Innovators.
:: MAKING A GAME OF IT
Innovator: David McDivitt,
Oak Hill High School (IN)
Breakthrough: Educational gaming
In his 13th year teaching at Oak Hill High School, David McDivitt is always searching for ways to motivate and engage his students. With increasing access to technological devices and the explosion of gaming within the student culture, it was only natural that McDivitt, an avid gamer himself, turned to computer games to reach students with something they love.
The program began last spring, when during a unit about the political and economic causes of World War II, McDivitt introduced students to an off-the-shelf computer game called Making History. The game, from manufacturer Muzzy Lane, has players reenact different phases of the war and strategize to determine outcomes in a virtual space.
ON POINT Making History can create historically
inaccurate results, so McDivitt continues instructing
his students while they play the game.
While the game is fun, McDivitt chose it because of its emphasis on history. He also selected Making History because it passes what he calls the “mommy test.” There is no blood or gore, no foul language. There is no lewd or inappropriate content of any kind. Also, because Making History was designed in such a way that it does not take 20 hours of play to reach the final phase, McDivitt was able to use the game without taking up too much class time.
In all, 64 sophomore students learned about the early stages of World War II by playing Making History. As a control, McDivitt taught another group of students with standard history textbooks and conventional lectures and assignments. When he tested both groups of students, those who had learned via the game scored as well or better on every single question. In particular, game players were noticeably better at identifying the geography of Europe, explaining the significance of the 1938 Munich Conference, and listing reasons for the start of the war.
With results like these, McDivitt has turned to other games to enhance the learning process. This year, in his sociology class, he started using Electronic Arts’ The Sims 2, which enlists students in directing the lives of simulated people. It’s filled with social interaction and relationships, and puts many things from the textbook into the context of a game. He also has introduced blogging to his sociology students, who are instructed to make their blogs school-appropriate. Most of their writings relate to The Sims.
McDivitt says he is surprised by how much his students have enjoyed blogging; it is just a form of journaling in a public forum. Still, he knows that games and other new forms of social networking can never completely replace age-old instructional methods, or the importance of the physical presence of the teacher. But he says technology can be a potent complement.
“Anytime I can use technology in class, it helps me connect with kids who are walking around with cell phones, iPods, laptop computers,” he says. “Instead of fighting the technology that everyone’s exposed to, we need to embrace it. We can use it in the educational world to teach kids.”
:: THE POD SQUAD
Innovator: Grace Poli,
José Martí Middle School (NJ)
Breakthrough: English proficiency
In 2004, Grace Poli, media specialist for José Martí Middle School in Union City, NJ, began developing a program to help her school’s bilingual students become proficient in English using an iPod as the primary classroom learning tool.
“When I first looked at the iPod, I quickly realized that this is much more than a device for listening to music,” says Poli, whose district uses Apple laptops, iMac desktops, and Apple mobile carts in most areas of its curriculum. “And, in fact, it can be a very powerful educational tool, especially for our limited-English-proficient students.”
AN APPLE FOR THE STUDENTS At José
Martí Middle School, ESL kids use an iPod as
their primary tool for gaining proficiency in English.
Pod People, as the program is known, helps the school’s ESL students learn English by engaging them in a new and exciting way. The three main teaching components of the program are audio books, for reading comprehension; song lyrics, for teaching proper grammar; and the iPod voice recorder, for improving speaking skills.
Pod People started as a special seed-grant program for technology innovation, sponsored by the superintendent of schools. Therefore, initially it had to be small in scale and economically feasible, and it had to deliver noticeable, measurable results—and it did. “My biggest surprise was that, within just the first year, half of the Pod People students successfully exited the bilingual program, having become proficient in English,” says Poli. “Now these very same students are in regular classes, receiving instruction in English. And two of these students recently graduated with honors.”
The program has proven so successful that it is being expanded this year to 12 other schools in the largely Hispanic Union City School District as part of a pilot project, and now at José Martí, it’s being used to teach students with special needs. Rather than audio books and song lyrics, teachers are using podcasting as the principal teaching and learning tool. The students are using Apple’s GarageBand to create instructional podcasts to help them review for the New Jersey Grade Eight Proficiency Assessment. They are also using the iPods to write stories that will be turned into podcasts.
From her experiences developing the Pod People program, Poli says the best advice is to “always consider all types of technology as a potential learning tool for the classroom. We discovered that, through the implementation of iPod technology, the Pod People lessons greatly enhanced the learning experience, yielding extremely positive benefits for our students, a renewed enthusiasm from their parents, and inspiration for their teachers.”
