From the May 14th edition of the Birmingham News:
LAURA McALISTER
News staff writer
It was 5:30 the evening before her geometry test, and Mary Kathryn Sawyer was stumped, but by 9 p.m. she and her teacher had figured out the problem.
It wasn’t a late-night study session that helped the Oak Mountain High School student prepare for the test, but an online blog.
Sawyer’s teacher, Suzanne Culbreth, has been using a blog, or online journal, to post daily lesson plans and hints for tests. The blog allows students to post comments and questions and receive quick answers from their teacher even after school is out.
“It’s really great because if Mary Kathryn has a question on a problem, then maybe someone else does too,” Culbreth said. “This way the explanation is out there for everyone to see. I call it a virtual study session.”
Shelby County public schools can expect to have many more of the virtual study sessions since a new server went live earlier this month.
New server goes live:
The server, called “Show and Tell: Pods and Blogs,” allows all teachers in the system to have blogs like Culbreth’s, as well as podcasts. A podcast is a broadcast that can be accessed online and played back on personal computers and digital music players.
Susan Poling, the system’s technology coordinator, said students are already blogging and podcasting socially, so it made sense to use the technology for learning.
Oak Mountain High freshman Kristen Igal compares blogging and podcasting to some of the online social networks already used by teens. “It’s kind of like Facebook for school,” she said.
Poling said the podcast and blog server cost about $10,000, and the software to produce podcasts and blogs was free.
The podcasts and blogs can be accessed from the system’s Web site, or in some cases individual school Web sites.
The goal is to have a tour of each school posted online by next year. Fourteen of 36 have posted a tour so far. Vincent Middle/High teacher Tommie Usry said two of her students spent last week taking pictures of the school to use for their podcast. Some schools also have posted public service announcements and video of special school projects. Poling hopes the tours will be useful to new students, and the public service announcements and class projects can be viewed by parents as well as other educators and students.
Those are just a few uses, though, of the technology.
“The possibilities are really endless,” Poling said. “We hope to see teachers using it in the classroom and using it for professional development. We also thought we could record the bands, and play them online. We could have a battle of the bands online. I just think there’s so much we could do. It really gives students an outlet to be more creative.”
Public service uses
Students in Dawn Bone’s broadcasting class at Calera High are using the podcasts for public service announcements. One talks about the benefits of eating healthy. “It has two eating bananas,” Bone said of the students in the podcast. “It’s just cute and kind of silly.” Another podcast produced by her students is about the dangers of speeding.
Bone said she expects to use podcasts to broadcast special school events online or possibly to record lectures, so absent students can listen to what they missed online.
Adding the podcast and blog server was part of the school’s technology plan, Poling said. System officials wanted students to be able to use the technology for education, she said, but they also wanted it done in a safe environment.
Teachers have complete control over what podcast and blog postings are published online.
“The reason we put in our own server was so inappropriate material can’t get in,” Poling said. “Our overall goal is using social networking in a safe and purposeful manner.”
More and more teachers are using blogs and podcasts, but the technology is not often implemented systemwide, said the president of a statewide organization dedicated to improving the quality of teaching.
“A lot of technology coordinators shy away from it because they think it could be dangerous, but Susan Poling saw the value in it and found a way to use it safely,” said Cathy Gassenheimer of Alabama Best Practices Center.
Culbreth, who has been blogging with students for a year now, said she’s just discovering all the uses of the technology.
“I think the big picture is that it gives the students a voice to the world,” she said. “Maybe a ninth grade class in New York is reading ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ and they can share their thoughts with students here. There’s just so many neat possibilities for collaboration.”
lmcalister@bhamnews.com
