They haven’t learned cursive yet. They can’t even type with more than two fingers. But the second-graders in Jill Montoya’s class at Green Mountain Elementary School in Lakewood assume computers are about as easy to use as markers and tape.
“Now, you’ve never used Publisher before, but I think you’ll be able to do it, because it’s sort of just like PowerPoint or Microsoft Word,” Montoya tells two students, who are beginning work on a newsletter to report their findings on grasslands around the world.
Embedded in the lesson about tropical and savannah climates and the species that dwell there, the social studies class time also imparts the kind of fluency with computers that confounds many adults.
In part, because of technology demands built into the federal government’s No Child Left Behind Act, school districts like Jefferson County have integrated computers across primary-school curricula.
“These are tools that help students learn, not a separate entity in itself,” says John Canuel, director of Jeffco’s Department of Learning and Educational Achievement.
Students in the earliest grades are getting introduced to the whole complement of Microsoft Office tools, improving the clarity of their work through Word, recording third-grade space-unit science data onto Excel spreadsheets, using a graphical mapping program called Inspiration, managing images through KidPix, and polishing presentations through Image Blender – a simpler version of Photoshop.
Older kids are working in HTML on Web development, and this summer, Jeffco plans to introduce a new tool to give teachers a way to post classroom material on the Internet.
Tech support experts circle through Montoya’s room during the social studies lesson – they are fourth-graders who have donated their recess time.
“I do it because she’s my favorite teacher and she sometimes needs a lot of help,” says Kendra Christensen, 9.
Whenever the second-graders are stuck, they flip a red cup up on top of a blue cup. Christensen restacks the cups, blue on top, when she has answered their question.
While some of Montoya’s students are putting together their grasslands newsletter, next door another small group is videotaping themselves as they rehearse public speaking and presentation of their PowerPoint grasslands project.
“Felis Caracal can be found in Africa and Central Africa,” says Jordin LaMunyon, 8, standing in front of a picture of the desert lynx. She has got the same tools as a corporate executive who took a $1,000-dollar PowerPoint seminar, but for LaMunyon, the learning came easily.
“Sometimes computers can really make us smart,” she says.
She can rattle off how one would change the background for a slide, and how to insert images. And even though her mother has a laptop that she uses for work, Jordin acknowledges that adults sometimes seem to have a harder time picking up new computer skills.
“Because kids have kind of been on the computer a tiny, tiny bit longer than adults, and it’s a tiny bit easier,” she says.
“Parents are coming along. It seems like they’re five steps behind our students all the time,” says Montoya, who hosts “Technology Night” each year. She says adults seem to need more hand-holding, and want to be told “exactly where to click” when facing a new computer challenge.
“Students are natives in the world of technology. And adults are immigrants,” says Canuel.
Nowhere is that observation more evident than at nearby Devinny Elementary School, where fifth-graders have now given three seminars to teach PowerPoint to their teachers and school staff members.
At today’s session, about a dozen students are matched up with grown-ups, showing them how to build slides, animate titles and add sound.
“I think it’s funny that I can teach adults who are teachers, and they don’t even know how to do a PowerPoint,” says Matthew Enger, 11.
His teacher, Patrice Henningsen, believes Matthew’s case is proof of how important technology has been. She proudly displays a bound compilation of poems written by her fifth-graders after they read Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
“No limit. With wings of glory, I have no limit, that can cease, from doing beautiful,” reads Matthew, a self-described “math kid” who hated reading at the beginning of the year.
“It gives them a sense of accomplishment before they even begin to write, because they feel proud of how much they can produce technologically,” says Henningsen.
She believes computer tools enhance the creative process by freeing up the writer.
Her students produced professional-quality restaurant menus in a descriptive writing exercise. Hayley Seltz, 11, added clip-art pictures of all the different dishes, and zesty write-ups, including, “These chips will make your head spin off,” and “You will drink this smoothie like there is no tomorrow.”
Hayley got an A-plus on the assignment.
And a multimedia presentation she created on Ferdinand Magellan includes music and animation.
“I’ve got to be honest with you. This was a boring subject,” says Henningsen.
“Really boring,” says Hayley.
They agree that technology tools made learning facts about the explorer much more exciting.
To see the kids’ PowerPoint presentations, watch 9News at Five today.
