New+Century+New+Tools

New Tools for a New Century

By Emily Vickery

As the Academy marches into the 21st century, its faculty is using new digital tools to transform teaching and learning at the school.

Using nings, wikis, Gogle Docs, RSS feed readers, and other Web 2.0 technologies, instruction is evolving from the traditional teacher-lecture model to a more student-centered approach where learners collaborate, not only with the teacher, but with each other. Powerful, new digital technologies also allow learners to sift through the world wide web at lightening speed to bring information to their finger tips.

Web 2.0 tools allow students to be more than passive recipients of information from the Internet. They also can publish and share their own ideas and comment on those of others. Just as importantly, they can receive and learn from the feedback others share about their work. To put it another way, students can “talk” to the textbook and the book, and other students, can talk back.

John McWilliams, well known for his Upper School AP U.S. History podcasts, uses a ning in two seminars, Fact or Fiction and Cold War. A ning is a space on the Internet facilitated by a teacher where students share their work and collaborate. Mr. McWilliams noted, “Nings provide an excellent springboard for class discussion. They also provide a platform for our discussions to extend beyond the classrooms.”

Upper School English teacher Dianne McWilliams agrees. She reports that she, “used a wiki for students to share their papers and Google Docs for students to collaborate on their thinking and writing.”

Mrs. McWiliams, of course, is Mr. McWilliams’s mother. Proof that the excitement about Web 2.0 tools crosses generational lines.

In Stephanie Alexander’s Upper School psychology class, students log into their Google readers, which pull several websites about psychology into one place. Students save time by not having to visit each website separately as they read current research and gather relevant information for their weekly reports. The tools do the “legwork” for the students. But, synthesizing the information, of course, is the essence of learning and something only the students can do.

Mrs. Alexander shared, “I feel it is so important for the students to read about what is happening in real life as well as a textbook for information. The readers are a way to help that happen.” With exposure to various opinions, “Students are getting a well-rounded vision of psychology.”

Teachers also engage students in learning by creating multimedia movies and podcasts.

Upper School art teacher Connie Deal observed, “Creating podcasts engages students by blending information with images and sound.”

Upper School English teacher Carol Yeaman, who uses digital storytelling in her classes, agreed, “I think that often the technology piques and keeps students' interest.” One of her students reported, “I really enjoyed doing a multimedia project; it makes learning a lot more fun rather than just writing a boring paper.”

The efforts of the Academy faculty to use technology in innovative ways is already drawing attention from the education world. Last summer, for example, Connie Deal was invited to make a presentation on her use of podcasts at the National Education Computing Conference. More recently, Upper School Spanish teacher Anna Baker and Mrs. McWilliams were interviewed by Anne Jolly for an upcoming book on teaching and technology for the National Staff Development Council. Mrs. Jolly, a former Alabama State Teacher of the Year, is a well-known author and authority on creating learning communities.