November 2005 — MacAdemic/Mac Educator
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A Digital Doorway to the World
A determined elementary teacher orchestrates a collaborative project that links students worldwide with an iBook and the GarageBand music-authoring application.
WELCOME TO our new monthly Mac Educator department, coming to you each issue via a collaboration with The Software MacKiev Co. (http://www.mackiev.com), committed to demonstrating its vision of students and teachers using Macintosh technology to communicate, collaborate, and learn in the classroom. If you have a related story you’d like to share, please e-mail us at editorial@thejournal.com. Herewith, our first installment, from Mac Educator enthusiast Larry Anderson.
How d'es a “non-techie” teacher harness the massive power of modern technology in such a way that student learning comes to exceed the teacher’s understanding? And how can this be accomplished in an elementary school classroom? Finally, how d'es the teacher guarantee that her efforts and experience will include a personal, authentic global component as encouraged by a 1992 US Department of Labor report from the Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS; http://wdr.doleta.gov/SCANS)? To make matters even more difficult, what if the teacher’s students are all blind or visually impaired? While this sounds like an impossible challenge, it was met with flair and great success by one visionary instructor, with a big assist from the Macintosh (http://www.apple.com) iBook.
When Carol Anne McGuire, a teacher of blind and visually impaired students at Imperial Elementary School in Anaheim, CA, received her new iBook in 2002, she quickly surveyed the installed software. Although she admits to being wary of high tech devices and never imagined that one of “those things” would ever invade her classroom, there it was. An accomplished vocal musician, McGuire quickly discovered the music-authoring application, GarageBand, as she made her survey. Immediately, she had an idea, and imagined the possibilities the software held for her students. This new Mac would give them access—an iPassport, you might say—to a world they would likely never see without it. Using Garage- Band, her students could link up with other students worldwide to create musical compositions that would reflect each other’s sensibilities, talents, and cultures. The educational prospects were profound.
Unfortunately, McGuire realized just as quickly that she was incapable of pulling off her new brainstorm alone. Granted, the notion of giving her students a digital doorway to the entire world was cool and innovative; however, she possessed absolutely none of the technical skills to even understand what she needed to do, much less actually make it happen. So, she set out to acquire two things: 1) a working knowledge of GarageBand, and 2) access to students in classrooms around the world.
As she toyed with her iBook and began watching her students take to it naturally, she envisioned this project coming to life from right inside her classroom—if only she could figure out how to connect her students with those in other nations.
