ON THE PROGRAM'S
TECHNOLOGY
From Deborah
J. Kaesemeyer
I am always aware
that when I teach a person how to
work with technology, I am showing
at least ten other people how to do
technology because the information
my student learns will be shared
with friends, relatives, children,
and co-workers.
I determine how much
technological skill a person has
through conversation. I always ask
if the person has an email
account...if the answer is no, then
the first thing I do is start a new
email account for them. Their new
email account address immediately
goes into my address book and I
regularly email them everything from
links that need to be opened, to
'for fun' cards, to animated gifs,
to files that are zipped and need to
be opened, to pictures, to
attachments...technology just
becomes a natural process that
evolves out of conversation and
being a friend. The next time I see
them, I ask casually if they got
that 'cool link' I sent them...they
may say, "No, I haven't checked my
email." I say, "Let's check it now."
They say, "I don't know how to open
a link," and we, as friends, learn
how to do that...I usually suggest
that they find out how many of their
friends have email accounts and
suggest that they give their new
email account to their
friends...this creates a exponential
growth curve where more than one
student is learning...because the
things I share are shared with
others and the others compete to
send back jokes, pictures, files,
etc. and a whole community beyond my
student is becoming increasingly
technologically savvy.
Oftentimes, I learn
new things because a student will
forward a piece that a friend sent
and I have to learn how it works…for
instance, a student this week said,
"I really want to learn how Bit
Torrent works because I love
LimeWire and a friend told me I
could download music like greased
lightning if I used Bit Torrent.”
So, I showed the student a wonderful
site that I use called
howstuffworks.com and this week we
are both going to research how Bit
Torrent works and next week we will
demo it and see if it is as good as
his friend says it is….
I believe that
learning to task is the best
learning because people learn
quickly when they have a need to use
something. So, I never make
technology a formal learning
exercise…the GED studies are
formal…I want the student to have
fun with technology and see it as
something that makes his/her life
immediately easier…so all my
technology ‘lessons’ center around
something that the student doesn’t
yet use that will save him/her
money/time or something that
‘everyone’ is using that my student
will need to use to get into college
(i.e. Word) or to find necessary
information (i.e. Internet
browsing). New tasks are often
learned as off-shoots of old tasks.
In conversation with students, I
may find that they need to transfer
a file or save a file or send a file
to a friend or business
acquaintance…that opens the door for
learning how to burn to a CD, create
a file on a desktop, save to a flash
drive, send to a scanner or a
printer for a hardcopy. Are they
having difficulty remembering their
schedule or a wife's anniversary or
a nephew's birthday? Then, their
email account has a lovely
electronic calendar and time is
spent activating that calendar and
showing them how the reminders will
show up in their email accounts. Is
it Valentine's Day? Then
copy/pasting and finding images on
the Internet, using different fonts,
colored fonts, font sizes to create
Valentine cards for friends leads
into the ability to create a
business letterhead for a small
cleaning business or for a place of
employment.
I also deliberately
put my students in a position where
they need to know something new. My
new GED Discussion Board has caused
one of my volunteer tutors to learn
how to get signed into a board, how
to post, and how to reply. Several
of my students are becoming
acquainted with Rosetta Stone
Language Online Learning and are
going to introduce their children to
that computer program because we
were careful to ensure that our
students knew that this new program
is free via the Yuma County Library
Online site.
I also find out as
much as I can about my students…do
they run a small business? Do they
need a web page? Do they run a small
automotive shop? Do they know how to
buy from junkyards online or do they
know how to access repair manuals
online? Is there something they need
cheaply? Do they know how to buy
from ebay? Do they need to run a
background check on a future
employee? Did they know J.C Penney’s
runs a clearance outlet store on
their online site? Do they need a
recipe for jam cake? Did they know
that there are thousands of recipes
online that can be searched for
free? Do they need a replacement
birth certificate or driver’s
license? Do they need legal forms or
an address for a government
representative? Do they need to post
a resume or look for a new job? Do
they need to send fresh flowers to a
friend? These are necessary daily
activities that they can use
technology to easily solve.
One of my volunteer
tutors introduces her students into
Internet browsing by asking them
where they attended school and she
takes them into sites where they can
find old classmates.
or
National Geographics’
Pete’s Pond (a live webcam of a pond
in Botswana Africa)
They appreciate free
sites with puzzles and dot-to-dots
to keep children busy as Disney and
Cartoon.net provide.
ASSESSMENT
Assessment for my
technology students is based on how
my students interact with me via
email, online discussion, and
messaging. I keep an informal record
of each students’ ability and
especially note the questions they
ask when they get into difficulty
(i.e. lost an Internet browser,
couldn’t download a CD to the hard
drive, couldn’t make a shortcut to
the desktop). I also watch to see
how comfortable they are when using
a computer and note when they begin
venturing into their own areas
comfortably (i.e. a student who
began looking for images of her
hometown in Mexico, or another who
began researching the Peralta Stones
because her ancestors knew something
about them, or another who expressed
interest in MySpace and after a
brief tour of the site, tells me (a
week later) that she is writing to
someone on MySpace, a student who
looks for car parts online and later
tells me he really needs a credit
card to take advantage of some of
the online prices). Assessment
becomes a natural process that
measures the whole rather than a
stilted process that unnaturally
measures bits of unrelated pieces of
information.
In the center, we
have a technology team that works
not only to improve our students’
skills, but also to upgrade our
teachers’ technological skills. Our
center’s motto is ‘Each One, Teach
One’ and our technology team has
turned this around to apply to
teachers as well as students. Regina
Vieyra, our team leader, has
teachers fill out a small form about
new technology they would like to
become familiar with or that they
would be comfortable sharing with
peers. Then she matches teacher to
teacher and teachers teach teachers
how to work in Excel, Word,
PowerPoint, Web Pages, etc.
TRACKING TIME
Keeping track of
time—the McGraw Hill GED Online
Program has a tracking function that
allows a teacher to print data
sheets with the date logged and the
time logged for online study time
per requested dates. This is simple
and easy. However, I have noticed
that some time (when I know I have
been working at a student’s side in
the library) is not always recorded
by this program. Despite that fact,
we rely on the program to record
online hours. I do not tamper with
those hours, even when I know a
student worked certain hours at a
certain time, because I do not yet
know if McGraw Hill has a uniform
issue with time logging and in order
to keep data as free from skewing as
possible, I record time as it
appears on their report. Later, if
McGraw Hill reports a problem, then
I can apply their solution uniformly
across my data because it was the
original data provided by their
programmers.
The self-study time
reports have been challenging to
collect. A few students are diligent
in calling in or emailing their
monthly self-study time. I’ve
briefly experimented with online
reports that my students could fill
in and email to me and I may return
to that idea again in late spring.
This is a challenge I am still
trying to resolve nicely. It is a
concern because when I call students
for their time, they will nearly
always tell me 30 hours. I believe
that is an easy figure for them to
pull ‘out of the hat’ to satisfy the
hour requirement and have felt
uneasy about recording those type of
figures. Therefore, what I have been
doing for the last several months is
adding the computer time, their
tutored time, and estimating their
self-study time by means of homework
assignments that have been sent home
and returned during the month.
