Introduction
Don Livermore (dlivermo@monterey.k12.ca.us)
Wed, 26 Mar 1997 06:08:27 -0700
Hello,
My name is Don Livermore. I am a middle school library media teacher and
practitioner in the NSF Virtual Canyon project for the Monterey Peninsula
area. The project combines various aspects/tools of technology with
scientific research. My students work in partnership with the Monterey Bay
Aquarium, it's sister research facility MBARI, and California State
University Monterey Bay. A major goal of VC is to impact the way
information (content) is received, utilized, and presented. "Doing
science" in todays world demands the use of hard copy materials as well as
recent electronic and onlines resources. The same applies to other
curricula as well. The students use articles, reference books, online
searches, and teleconferencing units to amass their information. They see
the technological tools as a means to an end instead of just a cool toy to
play with. Oh don't get me wrong, they are more than happy to work with
these tools, but also realize how key they are to completion of their
project. They have come to use them like a pencil or pen. This is an
important aspect of our project. We want all students and staff become
familiar with these resources and use them as an intragal part of their
curriculum.
The dilemma is how do we move relatively low-tech staff and studentbody
towards this goal. One of the ways that has had some impact is to have
teachers select one of their courses of studies and work with it in a
technological format. They work with the librarian in the library's
application center. Using electronic and online resources along with hard
copy materials, student teams do research on a particular subject, organize
the data, and construct a multimedia presentation followed with discussion.
The teacher works hand-in-hand with the media teacher thus learning the
process along with the students. In this model we have given the teacher
and students training and acess to technology. We also did not create
another project to add to the already full plate, but simply took what was
on the exsisting plans and did it in another format. What was important,
the technology was available for the class and someone was there to train
and add support for all participants. After teachers and students have
participated in one of these electronic reports, we find a greater use of
technology for "school" work (book reports, homework, science and history
projects, etc) and a higher attendance at offered tech training courses.
I believe it is important that we all become more familiar with the ways
technology can be applied with present curricula in a natural,
non-threatening way. If we are to get buy-in, we can't create another
thing to do. It just won't fly in an already too busy world.