Connected Classroom plugs into tech-savvy students

Connected Classroom. Grade 5 teacher Edita Tahirovic gives 10 of her Sir Adam Beck Junior School students a quiz Thursday morning on Canadian author Kenneth Oppel's Silverwing using eInstruction's interactive technologies, the "clicker" and DualBoard interactive whiteboard. Courtesy/J.P. Moczulski

A dozen Grade 5 students sat on the floor, ears perked, fingers poised on their interactive 'clickers' eager to demonstrate their knowledge of Shade Silverwing, a fictional bat.

Teacher Edita Tahirovic asked her charges which characteristic does not describe the often obnoxious, runt bat featured in Canadian author Kenneth Oppel's book, Silverwing. Students click A, B, C or D.

"I'm finished!" exclaimed one student.

Fourteen questions later, Tahirovic's Silverwing quiz is over, as is the demonstration to Dell and Toronto District School Board (TDSB) officials and south Etobicoke public school principals.

Sir Adam Beck Junior School in Alderwood is a pilot site for the Connected Classroom, a TDSB-Dell partnership to bring interactive technologies to classrooms to engage students, while it supports the board's commitment to "differentiated instruction," an awareness that not all students learn the same way or at the same rate.

"Technology is no longer an option. It's an essential tool for learning," Chris Spence, TDSB director of education, told a group of about 40 south Etobicoke principals gathered Thursday morning at the Horner Avenue-Brown's Line area school.

Technology adoption figured prominently, Spence said, in the TDSB's development of The Vision of Hope, and in its priority to provide learning for all.

"Today's youth grew up in this digital culture," Spence said. "In fact, some have never lived without a computer, received a busy signal, used a phone booth, lived in a house without multiple TVs and remote controls. For them, Google has always been a verb...Our job is to reach and teach our students. When I talk to today's kids, they tell me, 'I want to be a creator.' I can be a be a filmmaker on YouTube, a recording artist on Second Life, an opinion leader on all the blogs, yet when they come into our schools, they have to power down. We have to find a way to bring the 21st century into our schools."

Dell has provided technology to education for more than 25 years. The company has implemented some version of technology in 2.5 million classrooms globally.

Today's technology addresses 21st century skill-building in a competitive global environment, said Paul Bell, president of Dell's Global Public Sector business unit.

"This is not about technology for technology's sake. We're here to drive student achievement," Bell said. "It's about implementing technologies in ways that will really make a difference in preparing kids to be successful in the future."

Tim Workman of the National Research Council of Canada suggested without changes to technologies, the processes and culture around education, the impact of technology adoption in classrooms won't bring Canadians into "the paradigm" of 21st century learning.

"This initiative isn't simply about technology," Workman said. "It's about reviewing the pedagogy, the methods by which our kids will learn, the structures in our schools and by helping the educators themselves make those cultural shifts coming forward."

Tahirovic, French Immersion Grade 5 teacher Marlene Pysanczyn and literacy and English teacher Tim Gard use 24 Dell touchscreen, wireless Netbooks, eInstruction "mobis" or writing tablets and eInstruction "clickers," which are portable voting devices that send students' answers directly to the eInstruction DualBoard interactive whiteboard with their classes.

This year and next, the teachers will study whether the technologies affect student achievement, Gard said.

"Good technologies further empower what good teachers are doing in the classroom," Gard said. "It makes it easier, more efficient to teach. Kids look at it from the perspective, 'What can I do with this? Does it empower me?'"

Post-Silverwing quiz, Tahirovic demonstrates how the software provides a pie chart to reflect the percentage of students who gave correct answers, and notes which students did not.

Assessment is instantaneous. Interactive quizzes take minutes to mark.

"It saves time. Students are more engaged," Gard said. "If I find a question that all students are not getting (right), either I'm misteaching or I need to go back over that content again. It makes the number crunching much easier. It's done for you."

Grade 5 student Victoria V. said she likes the Dell Netbooks best.

"My favourite piece of technology is the Netbooks because you can do the most things on it," she said. "We've been using it for the most time compared to everything else. It's much more organized than paper and pen. Paper gets messy when you put it in your desk compared to a computer."