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“Open your mouth,” the fifth-grade Alabama student begged Clayton after a science lesson he did on the computer. “That’s your uvula,” he exclaimed excitedly, pointing to what Clayton laughingly calls the “hangy down thing in the back of your throat.” Using computer software to teach science is just one way teachers like Clayton (’98) are integrating technology into their students’ daily lives. Today’s classroom setting might also find a teacher using Power Point to teach a lesson on history or vertebrates. Students needing reference work for a research paper can find most everything they need on the Internet. And the Accelerated Reader program allows students to proceed at their own pace in reading, comprehension and language skills. Besides the obvious classroom uses, computers are also used to train disabled adults and help them become more independent. Computers are pretty handy to have around, but not to worry. Teachers will have a place in the classroom in the new millennium. “I don’t think computers will ever replace teachers,” the energetic Clayton says. “Instead, computers will supplement what teachers do.” Dr. Terry Weaver, Associate Professor of Education and Special Education who teaches technology courses at Union, agrees. “Technology is not substituting one mode (of teaching) for another mode,” Weaver says. “It’s something else, something different, a new level of sophistication.” Weaver has been teaching education technology courses since he came to Union in 1992. It was in 1994 that the state of Tennessee mandated technology skills for teachers in the classroom. Since that time, the courses have become a requirement rather than an elective for education majors seeking their teaching license. Students learn classroom presentation, Internet skills and how to use such equipment as digital cameras, scanners and laser disc players. Some of the course requirements include putting together a Power Point presentation, newsletter development, creating a grade book, performing a software evaluation, writing a teacher grant and touring Jackson’s STAR Center to see different types of software available to help the disabled. Technology integration - or the use of technology to teach various lessons or subjects - is the wave of the future, Weaver says. “The only limits on (what can be done with technology) are the limits of the teachers’ innovativeness,” Weaver says. Weaver says teachers can add action, video clips, music and sound effects to a Power Point presentation to really make it special for their students when lesson time comes. Or they can make a complete lesson and put it on laser disc to pop in at their convenience.
Of course not every teacher has the inclination to be on the technology superhighway. Anna Clifford, Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education at Union, admits some veteran teachers are overwhelmed by the advent of technology into the classroom. “(But) I feel like they’re open to learning,” Clifford says. “Something I really enjoy seeing is when our students go into the classroom and give a technology-based lesson that sparks an interest in the veteran teacher to learn more about the equipment they may have and not know how to use.” “If we can get our students excited and out there using (technology), then maybe it will rub off on others,” says Clifford, whose best technology advice to current classroom teachers is to “find what you have and use it to the max.” Clifford integrates technology into such courses as the one she teaches on elementary school social studies. For the past three years, her class has “adopted” a third-grade class at Denmark Elementary School. Clifford’s students e-mail their elementary-age friends Tennessee social studies information and later, questions. The friends call each other “key pals” instead of pen pals since the computer takes the place of the pen and paper. “We exchange information about Tennessee and at the end of the semester, we invite the children to come to Union for a ‘Tennessee’ day,” Clifford says. “We have Tennessee related activities and snacks.” Clifford says the activity is quite a bit of work for the third-grade teacher because she has to type all the responses to the Union students’ e-mails. But Clifford thinks it must be worth the trouble because the teacher and the students enjoy the relationship. Weaver and Clifford believe their own students must have started working with computers when they were about the age of the Denmark Elementary students. They are both pleased with the computer knowledge their students have when they arrive at Union. Weaver says most students come in with “enough skills to do their college work-papers, basic literary work.” The technology courses are in place to help the students-be they undergraduate teachers-to-be or veteran teachers working on their master’s degrees-deal with the interated technology demands that will be placed on them in the classroom. Though all the professors in Union’s Education Department try to stay on top of the latest developments in technology, it’s not easy - especially when things change at what seems to be the speed of light. Even the teachers who teach the teachers are constantly learning new programs, new systems, new ways of doing the same old thing. “We’re always learning,” Weaver says, “to get that edge on what you can do.” At Union, education students from just five years ago might be surprised how the computer lab has changed since their days at Union. This year, the Education Department has a newly redesigned lab that was completed recently with 12 personal computers (PCs) and one teacher unit. The room is arranged so two students can work at each computer station, making space for 24 students and the teacher. Though the University had been using Macintosh machines for the past several years, a switch was made to PCs this year. “PCs are cheaper, and they’re what most school systems have,” Weaver says. “It seemed logical to go with what the students would be using when they go out into the field.” Lori Clayton believes Union prepared her well for the work world as she found it in her central Alabama school special education classroom. She especially appreciated being exposed to the STAR Center in Jackson where she saw and evaluated some of the software that would be used in her career of teaching disabled students. Technology is vitally important in the classroom today as it will be in the future, Clayton predicts. “Look at all the jobs out there today,” she says. “There are very few that don’t use computers in some way. You just don’t not use a computer these days. The skills kids learn at a computer will last lifelong.” Clayton says the good thing about children is they aren’t afraid of computers like some adults. And she thinks computers are especially helpful to special education students like the ones she taught last year. “Kids love it,” she says. “It’s amazing - and fun!”
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