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  • Tribune-Star/Joseph C. Garza Digital lesson: Aireanna Bowman, a seventh-grader at Riverton-Parke Junior-Senior High School, asks a question of health teacher Sarah Norton during class Jan. 12 at the Parke County school.

    MET 011212 RP TECH BOWMAN.jpg

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January 29, 2012

My Big Campus: Students eager to learn online

Sue Loughlin The Tribune-Star

MECCA — Students are eager to learn in Sarah Norton’s seventh-grade health class at Riverton Parke Junior-Senior High School in Parke County.

They use MacBook computers and “My Big Campus,” an online learning platform that uses a format similar to Facebook (it is not associated with Facebook).

Teachers can use My Big Campus to initiate class discussions and set up online learning activities.

Through My Big Campus, Norton can find out what other health teachers across the country are doing in their lesson plans, and she can incorporate them into her own. She also uses some material from the classroom textbooks, which she can scan or type in.

At the start of the semester, she gave students step-by-step instructions, but they’d tell her, “We’re already there,” she said. “They take off with these so fast.”

Students say they much prefer online learning to textbooks. Just ask them. “I don’t like school books” and carrying them around all day, said seventh-grader Kollin Mansinne. When he learns online, he’s more willing to do things outside of class, he said.

Seventh-grader Dana Cottrell uses a laptop at home and has Internet on her cell phone. Textbooks are “not very fun or interesting,” she said. “I like this better because it makes things easier, and whenever you’re doing things online, it’s more self-explanatory.”

With My Big Campus, Cottrell likes discussion boards, where she can give opinions, read others’ comments and react to them.

Norton has found that students don’t complain when school work is online using My Big Campus. “They’re done so fast, they shock me,” she said.

Rachel Porter, digital curriculum specialist, also finds pupils often are more comfortable posting their thoughts and asking questions online rather than raising their hand and asking in class.

Students work more collaboratively, Norton said.

If one student has questions about an assignment and posts it, several other students will respond. “All of a sudden, there are 15 helpers and they are all working together,” Norton said.

More and more teachers were learning about My Big Campus last week as part of Southwest Parke Community School Corp.’s transition from print to a digital curriculum. Increasingly, students will learn through digital, or electronic, tools rather than reading traditional textbooks.

When Porter provided training on the digital curriculum at Montezuma Elementary last week, she touched on My Big Campus, and it was a hit. The teachers “are so eager, I can’t train them fast enough…” she said.

My Big Campus is a product of Lightspeed Systems, which provides the district’s Internet filtering. It is included in what the district already pays to filter Internet content. “We do not pay anything additional to use My Big Campus,” Porter explained.

Riverton Parke teachers recognize the need for greater use of technology, but have varied reactions to the direction the district is going. Some suggest there may be too much emphasis on technology in the move to a digital curriculum.

There also is some concern about whether the district will be able to afford maintaining the netbooks, and what role the digital curriculum will have in teacher evaluations.

Riverton Parke social studies teacher Michael Butler sees the change as inevitable and only a matter of time, based on the level of technology students already have mastered.

With the digital curriculum, students will have access to a lot more resources, he said. His biggest concern is “just getting prepared,” he said.

Mike Lunsford, who teaches English, humanities and U.S. History, said of the digital curriculum, “I think there are a lot of great possibilities for it. I don’t plan on throwing out everything I do and starting over.” But he does, and will continue to, incorporate digital tools into his teaching.

Use of netbooks will enable his students to delve into data bases for research papers, right from the classroom, “which will be great,” he said. Also, “They will be able to connect anywhere they are at,” removing some excuses for not getting homework done.

But digital tools should not be used because they are more entertaining, Lunsford said.

“I don’t necessarily think my job is to entertain … Sometimes things are just not entertaining. Sometimes things are just hard,” Lunsford said.

Spanish instructor Dilia Smith already incorporates a lot of technology in her teaching and is looking forward to the student netbooks, which have recording capability. Her students will be able to talk and record their Spanish, and then listen back, using netbooks.

One student in the Spanish class that day, Tasha Gossett, didn’t know about the netbook she’ll use next year.

But the sophomore was glad to hear about it. “It will be better, because we won’t have so many books to carry around,” she said. It will help in other ways. “I think it will be easier because I lose my homework a lot,” she said.

Freshman Michaela McGlynn said, “I think it’s awesome.” Information will be up to date, not out of date, as often happens with textbooks.

Technology comes naturally to students and is part of their everyday lives, she said. “You use technology every day.”

Teacher John DeLisle’s desktop publishing class has had a surge in enrollment since he began using “Edmodo,” another virtual learning environment similar to Facebook and interactive in similar ways.

“It’s an educational Facebook,” but it’s more controlled and there are more rules, he said. Students can’t send messages back and forth to each other. (Edmodo is not associated with Facebook).

Since he’s begun using Edmodo, the difference in his students is “amazing,” DeLisle said. “It’s the difference between night and day.”

 Students not typically engaged are engaged, he said. He began using it last semester after he learned about it at a conference.

He immediately thought to himself, “This is gold,” and he was right. “Students love it.”

Commenting on the transition to a digital curriculum, he said, “It’s a step in the right direction.”

But it’s important technology be used to teach the academic standards, and not as a “novelty,” he said.

Southwest Parke will present information on the digital curriculum initiative from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Friday, when it highlights programs and projects from all three schools. The event will occur at Riverton Parke.

Sue Loughlin can be reached at (812) 231-4235 or sue.loughlin@

tribstar.com.

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