Volume 9, Number 9: Summer 2003
by Claudia Rinaldi,
UW-Whitewater
Technology literacy is increasingly
an integral part of public school education that includes teachers,
administrators, other professionals and parents (Bernshausen & Cunningham,
2001). According to Becker (1998), word processing and the Internet
may be the most valuable computer technologies used in school. Teachers
have begun to use email regularly, and students are involved more each
day using the Internet for research and communication (Becker, 1998).
In fact, Lewis (1998) stated that the Internet not only allows for dissemination
of curriculum but also for communication, because it decreases the social
barriers that keep teachers, parents, and students from communicating. A needs assessment identified
different technology interests and abilities of teachers. The project
identified certain tools that would bring teachers, parents and students
together in one place. The tools included class web page/newsletter,
an online gradebook, class calendar, class emailing capabilities, message/discussion
board, parent and student access, lesson plans/strategy sections, submission
of articles and practices, and teacher-to-teacher communication accessibility.
At UW-Whitewater, we have
been using the site's discussion/message board to follow in-service
teachers who register for action research classes as a way to provide
mentoring from faculty, other professionals, and other inservice peers
in a variety of subjects. Our hope is that this mentoring will promote
professional development, as well as help in the retention of special
education teachers in the state of Wisconsin, a recommended practice
identified in the literature (Bernshausen,D. & Cunningham, C., 2001). For teachers, the site provides access whenever and wherever it is convenient for them--at home, at work or wherever they have a connection to the Internet. The teacher can print access information for her/his students, add calendar events such as test days, assignments due, parent trainings, back to school night, and/or professional and parent conferences and trainings. The teacher has the ability to add any number of assignments and to weigh them based on points or percentages. The teacher also has access to all of the students/parents email addresses and can send emails directly from the site. In addition, teachers can use their class message board to put academic, study skills or behavior strategies, and additional information regarding any topic of their choice. Typically, teachers have ten assignments and three classes registered with the site. For students and/or parents,
the website has two password protected steps, which circumvents concern
about other parents or students seeing each student's information. Once
students have gained access to their class, their home page diplays
calendar events, message board/discussion postings, and up-to-date grades
all in one page. In addition, it allows contact via the message board
with the teacher to discuss assignments, strategies, and/or resource
information at any time of the day. During program evaluation, user feedback generally fell under the following topics:
Additional evaluation efforts are on the way for identifying demographic information, computer standards addressed, and computer skills of the users are on the way. An intervention study on the use of interactions for parents using the site will begin this fall and findings will be reported later this year. For the future, we are awaiting
grant funding to enhance the site to include a personal class or school
pages, strategies for academics and behavior management, the ability
to upload documents such as presentations, batch downloading and/or
uploading student information, online-tests that integrate with the
gradebook, and a class links section.
Becker, H. J. (1998). How are teachers using computers in the classroom? Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association. (Found in http://www.crito.uci.edu/tlc/FINDINGS/special3/) Bernshausen, D. and Cunningham, C. (2001). The role of resiliency in teacher preparation and retention. Teacher Education presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. Johnson, D. (2000). Teacher web pages that build parent partnerships. Multimedia Schools, 7(4), 48-52. Lewis, J. D. (1998). How the Internet expands educational options. Teaching Exceptional Children, 30(5), 34-42. |