UGN articles UGN articlesThese Montevideo Middle School (VA) students discover how much fun learning can be with a wireless Apple Mobile iBook lab!
What's more fun than using the computer in your classroom? These Montevideo Middle School students are finding out with digital cameras and their wireless Apple iBook lab -- taking the computer learning experience outside of the classroom.
Computer literacy educator and athletics coach Joe Showker is one of the first in the Rockingham County (Virginia) Schools system to take advantage of a new program featuring an Apple Mobile iBook Lab.
The Shenandoah Valley Technology Council (SVTC) received an EdTech grant allowing the purchase of three iBook Wireless Mobile Labs for shared use among the county schools. Teachers like Showker can sign up for one to two week 'visits' with the lab, and utilize the fully wireless networked laptops in their classrooms.
Showker is adamant about fully integrating the computer into everything he teaches his students. His passion for technology is becoming contagious throughout the county schools. While the new mobile lab is in his classroom students get a two-week immersion in the latest software and digital capabilities like movies, music, slideshows and presentations. Showker teaches many "real world" activities that they will be required to do later as they progress through their academic careers. In all his classes he weaves graphics into the curricula to help normally mundane topics, like database, come alive and hold the student's attention.
Pictured here are photos from the first lessons utilizing the new lab. Students take digital photos, collaborate with other students and work through structured assignments and skill builders. They'll learn how to use the video projection system, integrating the information and data they've created or captured. They integrate their researched information into both printed reports and web pages -- all of which the students build themselves.
In last week's interview, Showker relates the impact of digital learning:
"Young people are digital learners. In most situations they're exposed to as many as six hours of digital stimulation per day, be it TV, computers, cell phones or video games. This demands that our teaching model change along with society. Teaching methodologies as recent as five years ago no longer fulfill the needs of today's students. Reading or lecturing to students is an ever decreasing part of the teaching equation. Today's digitally aware students demand to be integrated into the learning process -- they interact and participate or look elsewhere."
Under normal circumstances Showker's students utilize modified web quest for research rather than searching through volumes of encyclopedia, dictionary and other books to take written notes. They use in-class computers to find accurate sources, take text notes, capture screens, download graphics, and interview specialists in the topic of study. Showker feels this not only teaches the subject matter -- but the methods and skills they'll need, later in life to gather, compile and present information effectively. The mobile lab adds a whole new prospective to this formula allowing students to move out of the classroom for research, to take notes and even collaborate with others in the outside world.
Showker has taken computers seriously and is one of the leaders in technology integration in Virginia schools.
"The new digital imaging capabilities of today's Mac has innovated other areas of education as well. In coaching high school athletes, I make extensive use of digital still photography and digital video. Students learn any physical activity 100% more effectively by seeing the action rather than merely reading about it."
On the athletics field, Showker carries a small digital video camera and captures video clips of his students' performance. He then mixes these with in-class critique to help athletes hone their skills and work through problems. By burning video clips to CDs or DVDs, the athletes benefit from engaging teaching tools they can take home and study on their own time. He then combines some of these clips with those provided by training experts, or seminars and clinics for full scale video presentations in the classroom.
Wireless capabilities help students break out of the confines of the classroom. The Mobile iBook Lab features 20 iBook G4 computers, each with 800MHz PowerPC G4 processor, 256MB of memory, 30GB hard drive, 12.1-inch (diagonal) TFT XGA display, CD-ROM drive, and preinstalled AirPort Extreme Card, AirPort Extreme Base Station, Apple Remote Desktop software, and an HP LaserJet 1300N Ethernet laser printer. All are neatly and securely housed in a Bretford mobile cart which actually charges up to 32 iBook G4 computers at the same time.
Joe Showker has been in public education for 25 years, teaching computer literacy, Physical Education at both middle school and high school levels. He writes for various publications, including UGN and the user-groups.net, and is an award winning amateur photographer. He has presented throughout Virginia, Washington D.C., and conferences like MacWorld on the topic of Internet Safety for Families. Currently he is working with WebWiseKids.org, Blue Ridge Thunder, and Livewwwires.com, LTD in the implementation of the "Missing" software into Virginia's middle schools.
When not teaching computer literacy, Physical Education at Montevideo Middle School, or coaching at Spotswood High School, Joe Showker is active Mac magnate, "Safe Netting" advocate and member of local AACUG Chapter 'The Shenandoah Macintosh User Group.' See: "G5 Wows PC Business Users"
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