July 2008 — Case Studies
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Elementary Schools : Kansas : Transforming the Classroom
ACTIVE ENGAGEMENT Science
teacher Laura Niederee works with
two of her students.
WHEN PRINCIPAL DAVID HAMMER considered his wish list for a new intermediate school (grades 5 and 6) in Winfield, KS, comprehensive technology integration was at the top. To his good fortune, the school's opening coincided with its receipt of a grant from the Kansas State Department of Education's Technology Rich Classrooms (TRC) initiative. Hammer saw an opportunity to support cooperative learning while achieving greater integration of instructional technologies. He and Winfield Public Schools' director of curriculum and assessment, KayLynn Smith, were on the same page.
"We knew the TRC program would offer us a great blend of technology and vital training and support that is required to successfully incorporate new technologies into instruction," says Smith. "The technology allows strong teachers to do things in new ways—ways that can be more engaging to today's students." The TRC initiative aims to create 21st-century learning environments in classrooms in grades 3 to 6. Beyond providing access to technology, the project offers ongoing professional development and classroom-level support for participating teachers.
As a participant in the TRC project, Winfield Intermediate School sixth-grade science teacher Laura Niederee received 12 laptops, a projector, an interactive whiteboard, a student response system, online science textbooks, and science probes. "The best part of TRC is having the confidence to tackle many aspects of using technology that I was reluctant to try," she says. "It has enabled me to see how technology can be used in so many different ways."
Niederee's willingness to try new instructional methods was put to the test when her textbook-driven unit on cells was not capturing her students' attention. She knew they were most successful when working in small groups, solving real-world problems and engaged with technology. She decided to create a standards-based list of the content her students needed to know, and then ask them how they would like to learn it.
The students chose to showcase their learning by producing skits, songs, videos, interactive whiteboard lessons, games, and class competitions. "They created some amazing activities," Niederee says. "They learned the content and enjoyed themselves while doing it."
Positive feedback from Niederee's students supports the advantages of a project-based method over the traditional textbookcentered approach. One student, Stevie, whose group developed an interactive whiteboard lesson requiring classmates to compare organisms by describing cell properties, says the project "gave us a chance to teach ourselves." Another student, Lauren, says, "It was more fun to design something than to fill out a worksheet."
