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Article about Teaching with Technology

It’s So Much Easier to be Spontaneous

I am a lucky beneficiary of the The Campaign for Prospect Sierra School, To Build it To Believe*, the fundraising effort to build new world language teaching facilities and a new performing and fine arts building at the Middle School. I teach in one of the new world language rooms built last year, thanks to the Campaign. What I call my new “toy” in the room is helping me highlight developments in the Spanish-speaking world for my students — sometimes the day they happen. I am talking about the new wall-mounted projectors with connections for a laptop, VCR, and DVD player.

One recent Sunday the San Francisco Chronicle ran a story on the confrontation between Douglas and Kristine Tompkins and segments of the Chilean government over the future of a wilderness area in southern Chile. On Monday, my eighth grade classes read the relevant stories for homework. We then discussed the competing issues: the beauty and value of the untouched landscape vs. the lack of economic development in the area.

During this discussion, the new equipment made it much easier to share rich background information through the different media connections. Via the Internet, we reviewed the articles on the screen in front of the room. Using the laptop connection, we looked at photos that I had taken while traveling to the nearby island of Chiloé. I also told the students about things I saw during the bus ride through that rural area that pointed to limited economic opportunity and health care. We then watched scenes on a DVD of The Motorcycle Diaries that gave us a visual feel for both sides of the debate.

The students took advantage of these resources to analyze the issue and discuss possible solutions. One student stood, asked me to show the online map again and then proceeded to propose a middle-ground option that was different from either of the proposals being discussed by the adults debating the situation in Chile. Other students then jumped in to probe and evaluate the new proposal.

This example is just one of many occasions where my classes of all grade levels have benefited from the new technology. Students have used the projector in presentations, shared their homework answers on the screen, looked at objects from a vocabulary list in the form of photos from a store in Spain and watched a music video. Another online article we read highlighted the latest development in the field of interpretation. Technology is now allowing doctors to use a “videophone” to confer with an interpreter who’s not even in the same room with her and the patient.

There is no question that my curriculum is much more “alive” when I can use these tools. In addition, the ease of use and immediate access make them fun and simple to integrate on a day-to-day basis. I just fire up the computer and projector and, ¡listo (it’s ready)!

— Jay Rhodes Middle School Spanish teacher

*For more information about the The Campaign for Prospect Sierra School, To Build it To Believe, click!