Technology Revolution
Advances in technology have produced the greatest changes in the classroom, teachers and other educators say. From the use of the Internet, e-mail, online grading systems, and high-tech interactive projectors called Promethean boards to problems caused by students who send text messages in class and photograph tests with their cell phones, technology has transformed teaching.
“Technology has changed immensely in 30 years,” says Wootton Principal Michael Doran, who notes that students often have more experience with new technology than teachers do: “We’ve got to compete with the kids’ [expertise] now. Before, we had pencils and they had pencils. Teachers are playing catch-up for the first time.”
Students’ access to technology means that teachers have had to adjust the way they do their job. They can no longer stand in front of a class and lecture, because today’s students expect to be entertained the way they are at home by TV, video games and the Internet, teachers say.
Jim Ritter, who teaches world studies at Westland Middle School in Bethesda, recalls wanting to show his seventh-grade students how far technology has advanced. So when he taught about the Industrial Revolution this past school year, he brought in a record player and an electric typewriter. “There were no computers, no iPhones, no Promethean boards,” he says he told his students. “Times change. Now we have big copying machines. [Before], we teachers had to hand-crank, we had to pour in the liquid ditto stuff.”
Teachers say they use the Promethean board, a high-tech, interactive screen and projector system that transmits lessons loaded into a computer, to bring learning alive in ways they couldn’t before.
Neolia Parson recalls when one of her fourth-grade reading classes at Kemp Mill Elementary School was studying a book on boats, and she turned to the Promethean board and the Internet to show images from a Web site.
“I could show them right away what a clipper ship was, where the bow was,” she says. “It has made lesson planning easier. You’re not alone in the classroom anymore. You can go online and find lessons. It really has made getting resources easier.”
Ritter, who has taught in county schools for 40 years, says he occasionally uses the Promethean board to show students YouTube videos about pertinent topics to “grab their attention.” When teaching about Latin America, Ritter shows the video The Amazon Rainforest—The Evils of Deforestation.
Watching the video “opens up a good, initial discussion,” he says. “I like innovation. I’ve always been the type. I’ll take something and run with it. If you can work with technology and use it to your advantage, then you can capture kids.”
Computers have become an almost essential part of the classroom, especially when it comes to communication, teachers say. No longer do they have to waste time playing phone tag with parents like they did years ago.
“We do so much more on the computer,” says Celia Harper, a seventh-grade English teacher at Pyle Middle School who’s been teaching for 40 years. “Kids e-mail us, parents e-mail us. They check their grades online. The whole communication thing is so different.”
There are times, however, when the amount of e-mail traffic can become overwhelming, leaving teachers feeling like they’re never off duty. And then there are those messages fired off in anger that make teachers wonder whether a parent might have reacted differently if they were speaking by phone or in person.
“I just think there’s no cool-down time. It works both ways,” says B-CC math teacher Debbie Lerman. She says she knows she’ll send a more reasoned reply if she takes “time to let things settle out” before responding to a parent’s e-mail about a student’s grade or missed homework assignment.
Another technology receiving high marks is Edline, the online grade-reporting system. Teachers consider Edline a major timesaver in keeping students and parents informed about classroom progress.
“When I first started teaching, I had to enter every single student’s grade manually on their report cards. I had to fill out 150 report cards,” Lerman recalls. “Now those grades are just submitted electronically” by teachers.
But access to such technology isn’t always a blessing—especially when it’s in the hands of children. Although MCPS policy prohibits students from using cell phones in school, educators say it can be difficult to monitor whether students are using them to text each other in class. And there’s a bigger issue: students haven’t learned when it is appropriate to use the phones, especially those that take pictures, educators say.
Vickie Adamson, who teaches English at Blair High School, recalls a project in which students were required to perform poems in class. She was so pleased with the performance of some students that she decided they should perform again so she could videotape them.
That’s when one student piped up that he’d already filmed the performance with his cell phone. “I was mortified because students are not supposed to have cell phones [in class]. Secondly, I didn’t see him videoing and I am pretty vigilant,” Adamson says. “I didn’t think the student was being disrespectful or trying to break school rules. I just think there is a giant disconnect with kids and technology and how they use it in their lives.”
Still Love to Teach
Though these veteran teachers bemoan some of the changes that have occurred during their careers, not one is ready to leave the classroom. Despite problems they might have with the curriculum, dozens of years of experience have given these educators the confidence to know what works—and what doesn’t.
“I feel really good about what I’m doing,” says math teacher Susan Wildstrom, who has spent the last 28 years of her 40-year career at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda. “I try not to let every little disruption get under my skin.”
And it’s those “aha” moments when a student finally gets it that make the daily hassles, the curriculum changes and the swinging pendulum of educational philosophies all worthwhile.
“Every day, when you look out in the classroom and you see that kid is getting it, it’s so wonderful,” Hoover math teacher Dianne Stevens says.
