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The drawing is bold and clever, and the boy's recollection of touching the salmon at the creek is vivid. His teacher, Sue Olsen, is delighted. "Daniel is a very good student but very, very quiet," she says. "He is bilingual, and his family only speaks Chinese at home. So when he showed us the drawing he did on the computer, we thought it was terrific. We all thought the word 'nasty' was a great word choice-funny and apt. The visit to the creek was a very distinct experience for him. Something about working on the computer allowed him to express that, where he probably wouldn't otherwise." Daniel and his classmates at William Tyson Elementary School are participating in a salmon incubation project sponsored by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The project is the focus of a year-long science unit on cycles in nature. Last fall, Olsen and fellow teacher Cheryl Ondra took their students on a field trip to Campbell Creek in South Anchorage. There, Fritz "Fishman" Kraus, the biologist who founded the program, took a male and female coho sal mon from the stream and artificially fertilized the eggs. Making an incision down the female's underbelly, Kraus showed the students the red roe glistening inside. The students were awed. "They were overwhelmed with the sheer number of eggs-they just couldn't believe it," recalls Ondra. "They wanted to know, 'What would she do with all of those babies?'" To get an idea of what it's like to rear all of those "babies," Kraus helped the students place about 250 of the eggs in a cooler for transport back to their school. There, the students lowered the eggs into a specially prepared fish tank where the eggs will incubate for about eight months, first growing eyes, then a rudimentary tail and "yolk sac," and, finally, the tiny fins of the fry. By May, the fry will have grown large enough to be released into Taku-Campbell Lake, a landlocked lake inside the city limits. To avoid contact with wild salmon stocks, the fry must be released into a lake that doesn't feed into a stream. As the students observe the development of the salmon eggs for several months, they record what they see and learn in drawings and writing assignments. Each day, they log the water temperature and any physical changes in the eggs in a notebook next to the fish tank. Ondra and Olsen, who team teach, recently added another dimension to the salmon-cycle curriculum: computer technology. Computers allow students multiple ways of expressing themselves, the teachers say. The explorative nature of the Internet and desktop publishing and presentation tools such as Kid Pix Studio or ClarisWorks increases students' motivation, creativity, and problem- solving, they say. Working with Chery Bradley, the school's Title I technology specialist, they have integrated the computer into all aspects of the salmon project. Their students create their drawings and writings on the computer, incorporating recorded narration and a photograph of themselves into a multimedia presentation. Using a desk top presentation program (Kid Pix Studio), they are building a slide show that will take viewers from their creekside adventure, through each stage of fish development, and to the shores of Taku-Campbell Lake where they will set their fish free. But the project doesn't end there. Students will collect their slide shows into one file and, with the help of their teacher, copy it from a computer to videocassettes. Then they will take their videos home to show their parents what they know about the role of cycles in nature, fish development, and multimedia computer technology. Many parents are still uncertain about the computer's role in the classroom, Olsen says. They don't know what to think when their children use terms like linking, storyboarding, and downloading. "Many of them have a hard time comprehending what their children are talking about," she says. "Sometimes parents think they're just playing. But how do children learn? They learn through their play." When students show their parents their slide shows, Ondra says, parents clearly will see the curriculum being taught-earth science, reading, writing, editing. They will see the concepts their children are learning: the role of cycles and timelines in nature; salmon development; and the importance of salmon to Alaska's culture, environment, and economy. The computer can be a valuable tool to help teachers meet the needs of diverse learners. Three-quarters of the students at Tyson are Alaska Native, American Indian, African American, Hispanic, Asian, or Pacific Islander. Some speak English as a second language. Many of their students are thriving, the teachers say, because the computer facilitates their expression, helping them to demonstrate their knowledge in a variety of ways-visually, orally, and in writing. Computers can help students in many aspects of their learning, Bradley agrees. "Each time the students work with their pages of art and writing, and assemble them into a multimedia presentation, they revisit those core concepts," she says. The computer is especially suited to helping students create their own representations of knowledge. As they draw, students can choose to add computerized design elements such as patterns, borders, and colors. They can place graphs, photographs, clip art, or animated transitions between slides. They can write text onto their drawing, and they can include sounds or a recording of their own voice. And they can do this with a high degree of autonomy. This gets students excited. "Any time a child gets excited, you think, 'Wow, this is a good thing,'" says Olsen. "When you get excited about something, you learn it better. As an educator, you want to find what sparks the interest of your students. When you find it, it's like the light at the end of the tunnel."
On getting started:
On hardware:
On the Internet:
On salmon/trout programs:
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This document's URL is: Home | Up & Coming | Programs & Projects: Northwest Education | People | Products & Publications | Topics © 2001 Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory
Date of Last Update: 9/28/01 
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ANCHORAGE, Alaska—
TEACHER'S
FOOTNOTES
