Feature: Bookends of War
Announcer: Supporting Hawaii's teachers with integration of standards, curriculum, and technology, this is ETEC Connections. This feature entitled Bookends of War, explores the work of Gail VanDeVerg at Mokapu Elementary. The project includes a curriculum mix that meets standards in a variety of subjects while blending classroom work, lab development, guest speakers, and a field trip. From how she got started with technology, through project integration, to evaluation, here's Gail VanDeVerg.

Gail VanDeVerg, Teacher: You know when I first got into using technology in the classroom; I was so excited about it. I leaped into it without really preparing myself, and I told the kids that we were going to do this great online collaborative project and at the time I really didn't have the skills myself to complete the project. So I would suggest you at least have the basics down your self and have the capabilities to produce the product you want. I think what really got me going on technology as a teacher was I took a short web authoring class, and I really enjoyed it. At the same time I got internet into my classroom, and immediately I could see the potential for this in my curriculum, and then I also took a rather lengthy course called "Teachers, Technology, and Telecommunications," and a lot of the skills I had learned myself already, but I think the best thing I got of that was learning who to contact to find out if I did not know how to do a particular program or run it. Now I have this whole network of people that I can contact for help. When I initially started trying to integrate technology in the classroom, I think I was just finding good sites on the Internet, and trying to pull those into my curriculum. Then I contacted some teachers in Washington state, and we started some simple email projects, and that motivated me to try one of these student website contests where they're actually making their own site and putting it up. It's a great way to publish their work. What we are doing with this project, it's a CyberFair. It's an international student web design contest. My whole class is involved; it's my language arts class. We're addressing a lot of standards with this project. We're using technology, reading, writing, oral communications, and we are also hitting social studies and fine arts standards as well. The kids are in groups and they are making individual parts of our website.

Female Student 1: Our web page is going to teach kids about the Missouri, The Mighty Moe, and what happened.

Male Student 1: The website is trying to tell other people about what the war was about.

Col. Lee Grosshuesch, WWII Veteran: If people, if children just realize, if they could just picture what it was like and why, and how important it is to keep this from ever happening again, I think it's well worth while.

Gail VanDeVerg: One of the best things I found is to put the kids in small teams, and teach one child the skill and that way they can peer tutor, help their other team mates and that really relieves me from having to try to assist all 24 kids at one time. The use of the technology has really galvanized them, and they just are eager to come to class, can't wait to get down to the computer room and one of the best things I've seen, is that they are more than willing to help their classmates with this.

Male Student 2: I think it's fun cause we got to make our own website in our own class, and we all helped in it and joined together.

Female Student 2: I think it was really fun because a lot of people will learn that if you do something and it's maybe hard, that just keep on trying to do it.

Gail VanDeVerg: Collaboration is a very big part of a project like this. The primary collaboration we have is between the students themselves, and its quite a learning experience for them to actually work in a group, with a distinct goal in mind, and they really have to problem solve among themselves on how to achieve what they want. Beyond that we've been trying to bring in the community with the students as well, we've contacted the Arizona Memorial and we are trying to see if we can get an interview with a actual survivor from Pearl Harbor, and we just had Col. Grosshuesch, who was a pilot during the war. So the children have had a lot of opportunity to interact with him and ask questions like that. We're also going to be making a mural on our school wall, and some of the parents are coming in to help us with that. The mural is a way that we can show our school and our community what we are doing here with this project, and kind of leave a memento of our efforts here. With projects like these, evaluation can be very difficult or at least different than what a regular classroom situation would be. There is no paper that the children are going to answer true or false questions, so a lot of it is on observation, how the kids work in a group, and are they problem solving, or are they having difficulties working with their peers. Beyond that you want to try to make a rubric, and let the children know ahead of time what standards we are trying to meet, and what they have to do, their part to meet the standards, and you can develop this with the students and so they are fully participating in the evaluation of their project, and they know what they have to do to reach that good grade.

Female Student 3: Technology is . . . it's helping us show what we mean and show what we've seen, instead of just hearing about it, you can see it.

Gail VanDeVerg: For me as a teacher, it's really kept my own interest up. Sometimes teaching can get rather redundant if you're teaching the same lessons over and over, and this really opens it up. Not only is it wide open for the students, its wide open for me. My learning continues as well as theirs.

Female student off-camera: I think its fun to learn with technology, because then we get used to what we might have to do when we grow up and have to work.

Female Student 2: I think this project helps us in our future with our jobs and we will probably get a better chance of getting a job at computers because we have experience, even though it was in fifth grade.

Gail VanDeVerg: Well I certainly hope that we get there, and even if we don't win, we certainly had a great time doing this project.

Announcer: ETEC Connections extends a note of thanks to Gail VanDeVerg, Mokapu Elementary School, her fifth grade class, and community participants for sharing the Bookends of War project with us. We encourage you to make use of the resources Gail has provided on the ETEC Connections website, including the project outline, lesson plan, evaluation rubric, and the final site entry for CyberFair. In addition, feel free to explore our website for other overviews and feature videos, workshop offerings, tips on starting up, getting grants, meeting standards and much more. Bookends of War has been a LEI Aloha production of the Educational Technology Department, College of Education, University of Hawaii.


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