Five years ago I began looking at technology as a tool to improve my teaching. Rather than view it as yet another subject I had to teach, I saw technology as a way to make my students' education more creative and interesting.
Since then, I've used technology to explore the writing process, increase motivation, and present new material for classroom discussion. I now spend more of my time as a facilitator of learning rather than an all-knowing expert. Come into my classroom and see inner-city students empowered by technology.
Creating Visual Stories
Memorial Academy is an inner-city school in San Diego. About 80 percent of my English and journalism students are minority students. As you know, about 50 percent of African-American and Latino 9th grade students drop out of school. Technology is one strategy that, from my experience, may help to reverse this trend.
Last September, I began the school year with autobiographical writing with a technological slant. I first allowed my students to experiment with HyperCard (Claris Works software for Macintosh computers that allows you to produce nonsequential documents that integrate writing, oral language, sound, animation, and video). After about a week, I asked my students to find out as much as possible from their parents about their childhood experiences. They were to gather pictures of important events and people in their lives to be scanned and put into their “stack” (an electronic flip book somewhat like a pile of index cards). Stacking creates a visual story, including the concepts of time and space, as well as a written tale.
To get my students started, I distributed a list of criteria for the project and created my own stack to illustrate what a finished product would look like. The end product was to be an autobiographical hypermedia presentation.
Although it was rough going at first, fortunately some students pickec up on the procedure right away and were able to help others who were having trouble. Soon, everyone was an expert. After a few weeks, I didn't feel as if I were earning my salary. On their way in to class, my students would say things like, “You're not going to talk today are you, Ms. Taggart? We need to get right to work on our projects.”
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Reaping the Benefits of Technology
Putting a developmental tool such as HyperCard into the hands of students produces exciting results. With HyperCard, students can create alternative, interactive learning environments.
Since I integrated technology into my daily teaching, I've seen a dramatic change in my students' writing. They write longer papers, spend more time revising them, and turn in better works. They enjoy using high-tech devices, work independently and enthusiastically to complete assignments, and take pride in their creations. In developing their projects, they learn to design animation in their stacks, program the computer to play favorite songs or interesting sounds at the press of a button, use SoundEdit (software that records and stores sounds) to record and store their own and classmates' voices.
Students who used to bolt for the door at the end of class get so caught up in their projects that they sometimes don't hear the bell. These same students beg to stay after school so that they can finish their English assignments.
Technology encourages cooperative learning as well. As my students discover their own capabilities and expertise, I see a greater cooperative effort and exchange of knowledge. All students, from gifted to special education, take control of their learning. Students who had not written in previous years wrote their own stories and looked forward to sharing them with the class.
- The first thing I experienced, even inside the womb, was living with another person. I have never been alone. I have been with my sister since we were conceived.... We can talk to each other about everything and we have almost everything in common.... The only thing that's annoying when you're a twin is the way people compare you. But for me having a twin is living with my best friend in the world.
- This was the best Christmas that I have ever had. It was the first year I got to leave California to go to Mexico and I got to meet my little cousin Marcus. We did a lot. We had a real tree and we bought a new dog.
- On Friday December 22, 1978, Santa Claus delivered a small newborn baby boy to Judy and Wayne Dawson. Although he was three days early it was just more time for my parents to get used to me. If I could remember what happened the day of my birth I would most likely remember my parents making dozens of phone calls to everyone that they knew. I am sure that I would have been very scared that giant people everywhere were saying things I had no idea what meant.
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Writing Our Favorite Stories
We're never too old—or too young—for autobiography. It's our favorite story. It feels good to be the hero—and we're all the heroes or heroines of our own life stories. But the appeal of autobiography goes even deeper than that. In this diverse world of ours, autobiography is a vehicle to understand ourselves better and to help plan our futures. Adding technology to the picture further empowers students by placing control in their hands.
Few of us can completely comprehend the effect that gangs, racial unrest, or broken homes have on our students today. In their creations for this assignment, many of my students remember incidents that changed their lives. Gaining an awareness of the meaning of their own history adds to my students' knowledge of the world and themselves. At the end of the project, each child receives several copies of a personal book to share—his or her own life story. Some students feel it is the first time they have been given “permission” to mesh their worlds at home and at school.
