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ANCHORAGE, Alaska— Tears are a part of fifth grade. So when Randall sits wiping his flushed cheeks while the rest of the class digs into their book bags, teacher Pam Lloyd kneels by his side. It's a matter of homework turned in late. In Lloyd's class at Kincaid Elementary School, there are consequences for breaking the rules. But there are also opportunities to set things right. A few soft-spoken words and a hand on the shoulder, and Randall is back in the action. Like any good teacher, Lloyd strives for balance in her teaching. Discipline and fair play. Expectations and choices. At the center lies a conviction that human connections provide the foundation for teaching and learning. With its powerful communication capabilities, the computer has become one of Lloyd's most valuable tools in facilitating these connections. But it requires balancing, too. Technology's effectiveness in the classroom, she says, is only as good as the teacher and her relationship with her students. "The computer is a tool," says Lloyd. "The human part is what really makes the classroom. If I had a choice between the two, I could do without the computer, but I could not do without the human interaction. That's what makes the bond between teaching and learning." When a teacher integrates technology into good instructional practices, says Lloyd, she gains a new dimension to her teaching that can help motivate and engage many of today's students. "Kids are coming to us from such media-rich environments," she says. "Even kids from poor socioeconomic schools (in the Anchorage school district) are media-rich in their homes -- Nintendo, television, radio. So, I think they learn better when they're in a classroom where they have lots of technology available to them. That way, they have different ways to present their learning. I could teach the same lesson without technology, but they probably wouldn't be able to show me their depth of understanding." Though hers is a media-rich classroom, Lloyd strives to make the technology transparent. It nearly is. A visitor has a hard time finding the five Macintoshes, eight AlphaSmart keyboards, and two Apple Quick Take cameras. Like hidden faces in camouflage art, the computers in Lloyd's room are overshadowed by a forest of shapes and colors: wall displays and mobiles; books, books, and more books; overflowing resource tubs; and an "aqua corner" with fish tank and whale display. Lloyd also seeks to make technology transparent in another-more important-sense. She wants her students to reach for technology as readily as reaching for a pencil. If they need to create a graph, they can do it with a spreadsheet program. If they need to research the climate of Florida, they can search the Internet, among other resources. If they need to communicate what they've learned, they can use a multimedia presentation program to present their knowledge. This is part of being technologically fluentincreasingly necessary skill, says Lloyd. "Information is coming at us so fast that there's no way we can know it all," she says. "The problem for kids is how to look at that information and make a judgment or decision about it: Is it good information? What do I do with this information now that I have it? So kids need to be technologically fluent, which means knowing how to use technology to get the information you need, and the best information available." Lloyd has integrated the computer into almost every aspect of her teaching. While studying about energy, for instance, her students use the Internet to research energy sources in the United States, getting material from such Web sites as Energy Quest, created by the California Energy Commission (http://www.energy.ca.gov/education/index.html), and the National Energy Education Development Project (http://www.need.org/). "I do an Internet lesson at the beginning of the year," Lloyd says. "I explain that information on the Internet is not always valid-that unlike book publishing where there are guidelines, there often aren't any editors checking what goes onto the Internet. I explain where the most reliable information can usually be found; what '.com', '.gov', and '.edu' mean. We break down what 'http://www...' means, and we talk about domains, about hypertext markup language (HTML)." After searching the Internet, the school library, and the classroom book collection, student teams create brochures on natural resources in a region such as the Midwest or New England. They write text for their brochures using a word processing program (software: Microsoft Word) on a Macintosh computer or AlphaSmart keyboard. (AlphaSmarts are word-processing keyboards that can be used as a substitute on a short-term basis when a regular computer is unavailable. After composing on the AlphaSmart, students can download their document to a regular computer.) Students illustrate their brochures by downloading maps and pictures from Web sites such as Weber Publications' The 50 States of the United States and Microsoft's Encarta Online Schoolhouse (http://encarta.msn.com/default.asp?). Students create graphs and charts depicting the country's energy production and consumption in a spreadsheet program (software: ClarisWorks). Linking the energy curriculum with geography and history, Lloyd involves her students in online educational games such as the Global SchoolNet Foundation's GeoGame (http://www.gsn.org/project/gg/). Students from around the world compete to identify each other's hometowns from clues such as latitude, weather, and land and water formations. To demonstrate what they've learned about energy, students create a multimedia presentation that they share with their parents on Computer Family Night. They begin by creating a storyboard on paper, sketching out how they want their presentation to look. Then, in HyperStudio, they create "cards" that contain text and graphics, including a photograph of themselves taken with an Apple Quick Take digital camera. Students place icons, borders, and patterns on their cards to make them visually coherent and attractive. Many include scanned images, animation, and sound. Students then group these cards in a "stack" that becomes their presentation. A few resourceful students link their stacks with other students', creating a mosaic of dozens of cards. This spring, they will place their presentations on their own Web pages. Reflecting on how technology has helped her achieve a strong connection with her students and their parents, Lloyd offers this anecdote: "One of my students is from South Africa and every six months he and his family go back to renew their visas. The parents didn't want to pull Jeremy out of school, but they were going to be gone for a month. I asked them if they had a computer and Internet capabilities in South Africa, and they said yes. So I developed a Web page and put his assignments on it. I created vocabulary and geometry sites, a fun site, and links to other Web sites. Jeremy and I communicate by e-mail, and he talks about his homework with other students by e-mail, too. That's an example of how technology can be wonderfully effective."
On Internet safety:
On Internet searches:
On teaching technology:
On learning technology:
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Date of Last Update: 9/28/01 
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TEACHER'S
FOOTNOTES
Global SchoolNet Foundation's K12OPPS (
