July 2008 — Features
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Middle Schools : Strike Up the Bandwidth
Are districts suitably prepared for the ever-increasing need for faster connectivity in our schools?
ASKED WHY SHE INTENDS TO increase her district's
network bandwidth fivefold this summer-- from 20
megabits to 100 megabits-- Jennifer Bergland, executive director
of technology information for Texas' Bryan Independent
School District (BISD), responds with a line that could have
come from perhaps any of today's technology administrators:
"Because we are teaching the right way to keep our kids engaged."
Engagement is crucial for 21st-century students, and nowhere more so than at the middle school level. Middle school is a time of transitions for students-- from a single, self-contained classroom with one teacher who knows every student well, to six or even eight classrooms in which teachers see more than 100 students every day; from a pedagogy that is small, grouporiented, and involves students in active learning, to a stand-anddeliver method that requires students to sit and listen. And these changes occur as even more profound ones are taking place within a middle schooler's body and mind.
What happens if students are not engaged? They get bored and drop out. A lot drop out. According to "The Silent Epidemic", a 2006 report by Civic Enterprises in association with Peter D. Hart Research Associates and commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (www.gates foundation.com), "Each year, almost one third of all public high school students-- and nearly one half of all blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans-- fail to graduate from public high school with their class. Many of these students abandon school with less than two years to go to complete their high school education."
Hard at work keeping students engaged is Mark McCall, a seventh-grade social studies teacher at BISD's Stephen F. Austin Middle School. McCall is what his principal, Patti Moore, terms a trailblazer. Four years ago, he brought the school's network to its knees by having all his students go to this new site called Moodle that he found on the internet. Today, Moodle's course management system is embedded in the educational lexicon and is a vital tool for many educators. McCall and innovative teachers like him are driving the expansion of Stephen F. Austin's network.
McCall keeps his students interested by using the technology available to them, including the laptop each of them has by way of Texas' Technology Immersion Project, a statewide initiative funded by Title II-D of the No Child Left Behind Act. McCall has his students work in groups so they can pick each other up, and he assigns them worthwhile projects that he lets them know he will put to use in his classroom in subsequent years, so the students make an extra effort to have the information accurate and the production professional.
