July 2008 — Professional Development
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An Inside Job
"I realized I could not feel like an effective technology leader if I didn't have firsthand experience with online learning."
At Chester, the 10 OPEN NH teachers are swiftly infusing the course knowledge they gained into their classrooms. For example, six of the teachers who took a class called Designing a Virtual Field Trip for the Elementary Classroom augmented their existing curriculum with new website resources. Deb Freiburger, a second-grade teacher, created a virtual field trip about the Amazon rainforest.
"Parents can access the virtual field trip on our school website and share the experience of traveling virtually to the Amazon with their children," Freiburger says. "Another plus of the class was being able to access curriculum-based virtual field trips created by other New Hampshire teachers. After I read a Magic Tree House book with a group of advanced secondgraders, the students traveled to Pompeii using the virtual field trip created by a third-grade teacher in my OPEN NH class. The Pompeii trip was a perfect follow-up and extension of the story we had read."
Chester third-grade teacher Kim Bernard created a virtual field trip for her students so they could study rocks and minerals in the northeast United States. "The students were amazed that they could travel to caves and other places to learn about rocks and minerals and not leave the school," Bernard says.
Kessler says that each online course stimulates new ideas among the teaching staff for ways to integrate internet materials into their school curriculum. She describes a Chester teacher who took a course called Integrating Primary Sources Into the Social Studies Classroom. As part of her final project for the course, the teacher reworked an existing history unit with resources she gathered from the local historical society.
As Kessler explains it, the teacher interactions that grow out of online coursework can have far-reaching benefits for the school. "The knowledge I gained from one of my courses resulted in a discussion about project-based learning materials with a few teachers at school," she says, "which then resulted in the idea for our technology grant proposal."
The teachers were awarded $5,000 from New Hampshire's Enhancing Education Through Technology fund to implement one of the state's classroom technology "mini-grants." The initiative is now helping Chester Academy engage students in project-based learning activities. For example, students are creating electronic books and traditional companion books for the school library in partnership with students at nearby Chester College of New England.
