INDUSTRY
Waterloo Junior High Students Excited By Grid Connection
Geographically, Waterloo Junior High School and its 600 students are nearly 200 miles southwest and a three-hour drive from the University of Illinois and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. But technology on loan to the school from NCSA brings the knowledge and expertise of these high-technology powerhouses directly into the classroom.
Waterloo is now home to a very special PIG. Instead of a mammal destined for the breakfast plate, this PIG is a "personal interface to the Grid" that links the Waterloo students with the high-speed, high-quality integrated video and collaboration capabilities of the Access Grid. This makes Waterloo the first K-12 school in the nation with AG capability. NCSA's Education, Outreach and Training Division contributed the PIG hardware as a test-bed for how technology typically found only at elite universities and research centers can enhance the K-12 curriculum and the professional development of K-12 teachers. "Schools are facing dramatic cuts in their budgets. As a result, teachers less able to attend workshops and conferences to enhance their own learning," says Edee Wiziecki, EOT's coordinator of education programs. "We are exploring ways in which the PIG can provide professional development for teachers that will help them increase their content knowledge, learn new ways of engaging their students, or network with other teachers without leaving the confines of their school. We are excited about the possibilities." The PIG was installed to supplement Waterloo's participation in the REVITALISE program (Rural Educators Using Visualization to Inspire Teacher Advancement and Learning to Improve Science and Mathematics Education). Through REVITALISE, Waterloo's team of educators (principal Jim Helton, science teachers Debbie Clinebell and Karen Duvall, and math teacher Carrie Stewart) has received training and assistance in incorporating visualization and modeling technology into the classroom. In addition to the hardware and training from NCSA, the school also received a boost in bandwidth thanks to its local Internet service provider, the Harrisonville Telephone Company. Since the PIG has been installed in Waterloo's eighth-grade science classroom, it's become " the central communication tool in the classroom," says Clinebell, one of two eighth-grade science teachers. The teachers say that working with novel technology and connecting with science and technology experts who would otherwise be out of reach increases the students' motivation and enthusiasm. "Kids want to be seen. They want to be heard. They want their work to be evaluated by someone they see as an expert," Clinebell says. The Waterloo students have found a variety of uses for the PIG, including communicating with their "technology guru," NCSA education specialist Jasbir Naul. Using the PIG, some of the eighth-graders asked Naul how to transfer their data on household radon levels from an Excel spreadsheet to a visualization program, AVS. Because the students could watch Naul's tutorial and he could view their efforts in the classroom, the tutorial was quick and clear. "It's such an efficient and effective learning tool," Clinebell says. The technology has also turned the students into teachers, with a few students becoming familiar and comfortable with the PIG and then passing the knowledge along to their peers. Mastering and sharing the technology gives the students a sense of accomplishment, the teachers say. The Waterloo teachers are enthusiastic about the ways their students can use the PIG to reach beyond geographic borders and to engage with experts in a variety of fields. Students working on science fair projects could get advice and information from chemists, biologists, engineers, and physicists, gaining insight and getting a valuable glimpse of potential careers in science. "It shrinks the world. It creates a worldwide classroom," says Jim Helton, principal of Waterloo Junior High. And the teachers see potential uses for the PIG beyond the science classroom. "This is a completely wide-open cross-curricular tool. There are applications in every single curriculum area," Clinebell says. Students in English classes could use the PIG to virtually attend lectures by noted authors, journalism students could interview sources, and budding artists could view distant galleries. "I think any teacher who just uses it once will see so many uses for it," Stewart says. In fact, they expect their next obstacle to be managing competing demands for time using the PIG. "We've dipped our foot in it," Helton says. "Now we just have to get immersed." Helton points out that the basic format of classroom instruction has changed very little over the past decades; students from the 1950s could walk into one of today's classrooms, sit at their desks with their pencils at the ready, taking notes from a blackboard or overhead projector and not feel at all out of place. Given the technology available today and the many ways technology has transformed the world beyond the classroom, Helton believes modes of teaching and learning should adapt as well. He hopes that as the teachers in Waterloo have more opportunities to use the PIG and other technology, the tools will become so integrated into their methods of teaching and the students' learning process that working without them will be virtually unimaginable. "We're just now starting to realize the potential of what we could be doing," he says.
