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November 21, 2009

Building a digital classroom

Online learning options are growing

By Tanner Kent

Gus Allore remembers well the first day with his very own cell phone.

“It was the day after Thanksgiving,” said the Mankato West senior, “in seventh grade.”

Allore now has a Blackberry, from which he surfs the Internet and checks his Facebook account several times day. He also has his own laptop.

Fellow West student Amber Oachs was candid about using her cell phone so much that it’s been taken away from her at school.

“I send, probably, thousands of text messages each month,” the sophomore said.

Allore and Oachs have never used floppy discs or box phones. Neither can really remember the first time they sat at a computer because it was so long ago.

For their generation and those following, technology is not second nature — it’s nature.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 67 percent of today’s students will use a computer in preschool; 80 percent by kindergarten.

But a recent study commissioned by Cisco to catalog the research on technology use in the classroom found that, so far, “the real potential of technology for improving learning remains largely untapped in schools today.”

The study suggests schools have yet to broach the so-called “Web 2.0” technologies, which include social communities such as Facebook where users can both create and access content. And it also points out that technology is developing more rapidly than teacher training, leaving educators to integrate classroom technology themselves.

But schools are catching up — both to technology and the students who use it.

Several districts in the area now have specialists whose duties include helping teachers integrate technology into their lesson plans.

High schools in the area are beginning to experiment with online electives; interactive whiteboards have become standard fare in many classrooms; and both supplemental and full-time online charter schools continue to add thousands of students each year to their ranks.

Jeffrey Schulz, director of BlueSky Online School, which was among the state’s first online public districts, said this about the increase in online learning: “It’s growing exponentially.”

Darin Doherty, a St. Peter teacher who is on special assignment to work on classroom technology, said this about the potential for technology to enhance education: “It’s unbelievable.”

But to keep pace with students and the digital marketplace that awaits them after graduation, educators know they must fashion a new digital classroom. A classroom where technology is no longer curiosity, but common.

And that work is already under way.

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