December 2007 — Special Feature
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THE Journal's 2007 Innovators : 1
Edith Pickens
Challenger Middle School (AL)
Edith Pickens
Blogging. Wikis. Digital storytelling. Podcasting. How many middle school teachers have even heard of these web-based tools, much less used them? At Huntsville, AL's, Challenger Middle School, Principal Edith Pickens can tell you how many, both before and since she introduced the 21st-Century Learning program to the school's faculty. Before the in-service training last January, only 11 percent of her teachers had ever written a blog. A week after the training, the number was up to 22 percent, and by May it was 54 percent. In the same period, use of wikis rose from 4 percent to 25 percent, and digital storytelling from 7 percent to 32 percent.
Pickens and her trainers showed teachers how to use each of the tools for educational purposes. There was no obligation to do anything except watch, listen, and keep an open mind. The teachers, Pickens says, soon were impressed with how easy everything was to use.
Challenger teachers began not only using the technologies, but also passing on their enthusiasm to their students. An eighth-grade English teacher had her students analyze movie trailers, then create trailers for the novels they were reading and put them online. "It created a deeper way for students to express what their novels were about," says Pickens. This year, the students will incorporate digital photographs into their trailers.
A sixth-grade teacher's students developed a wiki to share what they learned about biographies they were studying. A math teacher uses a blog to share "challenge" problems: Students go online and work out the problems among themselves and with students from other schools. A social studies teacher has an ongoing podcast. For Black History Month, he interviewed a retired teacher who grew up in Montgomery, AL, during the civil rights movement and had met Martin Luther King Jr. Other teachers have blogs concerning math, learning strategies, English, and digital photography. (For examples of the teachers' efforts, go here.)
"This has taken our school further than I could ever have imagined," says Pickens. "It's the most energizing, motivating thing I've done in the past 20 years." And, she adds, almost incidentally, "it's been a lot of fun."
