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MARSHA
RATZEL
Diary #8
'It
felt like we were
all in the Amazon!'
On Friday, I
stood in front of 40 students and anxiously read to them what had been happening
to the field trip team exploring the Amazon region. All over the district
almost 8,000 students are scanning the cyberwaves each day to "hear" what's
happened. Students were on pins and needles as they awaited word on the
team member who stepped on a stingray as he pulled his overloaded raft along
a low spot in the river. I witnessed teachers and students learning firsthand.
Well, almost firsthand. It was world geography class at its best.
And I stood
amazed, as students were saddened realizing the long reach of terrorism.
The young girl whom students "met" on Tuesday was having trouble earning
enough money because the flow of tourists has stopped in her small Peruvian
city. Students were shocked at the impact of US events has on such a remote
and distant place.
The power of
the Internet to hook us -- us being the world -- together was humbling.
It felt like we were all in the Amazon --- sweating, struggling, and staring
in amazement at strange creatures and cultural differences. Teachers were
taken aback as they watched students pour over their textbooks to find out
the topography of the area and learn history of the indigenous people. I
think it made the teachers a bit apprehensive, holding unspoken fears that
their traditional teacher's toolkit might somehow be inadequate now that
the Web holds so much power.
I wanted to
yell at them that the Web does not displace them. It only serves to amplify
the curriculum. When we used ENature to
identify animal characteristics, their traditional teacher tools of researching
and skimming still held the key. Granted most teachers had never had accessed
indexes of characteristics by searching with ZIP codes in a search engine.
But is it really any different than what they'd always done? No. They still
held the knowledge on how to lead students into understanding what to pull
out, what to compare, what to analyze. The website couldn't do that.
I reveled in
my role of reminding them of the power their traditional tools held. And
that the incorporation of new tools was the hallmark of a lifelong learner.
And that as great as the Internet is, teachers are the key to understanding.
Otherwise, everything is just information glitz (ala Jamie McKenzie's 1998
article).
Later, as students
fleshed out their understandings of animal characteristics, creating Venn
diagrams downloaded from a graphic organizer website, we passed a smile
back and forth. Now we shared the secret that this website thing was really
a traditional tool presented in a format more familiar and motivating to
today's students. Smiling because this wasn't really so bad. So different.
It had just felt that way. Smiling because we can learn new "tricks" to
add to our teacher toolbox without having to totally re-invent ourselves.
Administrivia
is part of the price
I ended on Friday
smiling because I had survived another week in my administrative role. I
had endured countless meetings, to most of which I could contribute nothing
but my presence. I only had become discouraged once or twice to the point
of seriously contemplating returning to the classroom.
I also personally struggle with integrating myself in a sea of network administration
people, recognizing I have no real heart for the topic. But also realizing
that I must accept this role, if things are to run smoothly and seamlessly
from the background. Ahhhh..there's the rub, as Hamlet says.
So pardon me
if I linger a bit longer, "perchance to dream," basking in the reflected
glow of students talking excitedly about how the QuickTime movie of the
guinea pig dinner was really gross and cool -- and how they might like to
grow up and go visit Peru someday.
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