July 2007 — Case Studies
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Curriculum-Based Reform :: West Virginia
In the district’s middle schools, beginning in the fall, GPS and GIS (geographic information system) tools will be used to help students gain an understanding of their local heritage and the area’s geological concerns. (GIS technology stores, manipulates, and graphically displays geographic data in map form.)
At the high school level, science classrooms provide fertile ground for experimentation. Digital microscopes allow images to be put into computers and analyzed with software such as Scion Image. This past school year, Greenbrier County students began working with graphing calculators connected to probes to collect data for computer analysis. At the same time, the use of Vernier’s TI-Navigator learning systems also increased, and electrophoresis cells for collecting DNA were put to use.
The drive toward 21st-century learning picked up momentum in summer 2006, when the county put together two institutes, funded by EETT grants from the state, that sought to integrate scientific discovery into the practical application of mathematics, English, and social studies. Teachers from the two county high schools attended a science institute, where they learned to use Nova5000s (a learning device from Fourier Systems that combines the features of a laptop, a handheld, and a tablet computer), probes, a GPS, and a GIS. The teachers have since taken their training back to their classrooms and employed it in the study of local issues.
A second institute brought together high school students to document the science institute by creating a video that would explain 21st-century learning to teachers when they returned in the fall. In one week, the students put together a video that delighted the faculties at their respective high schools.
The excitement engendered by these two institutes and the subsequent studies teachers carried out during the 2006-2007 school year awakened educators in Greenbrier County to some crucial realities about today’s students: They care more when they conduct real-world studies involving their own communities, and they can utilize technology in ways we never dreamed they could just a few years ago.
Steven Hunter, a senior at Greenbrier West High School, took the computer-assisted art class which made use of the videography skills that teachers and students learned over the summer. “Twenty-first-century learning is about the capture, management, and transfer of media,” he says. “Having the chance to experience what actual film editors do was a oncein- a-lifetime chance. We made a ton of mistakes, but that’s how we learned. Trial-and-error was our main method. We had the ability to think of an idea, film what we needed, and then turn it into something great. Our resources were limited, but our imaginations were boundless.”
