Electronic Contact

For my electronic contact assignment I contacted a teacher named Jane Nicholls. She started teaching in Perth, Western Australia and eventually moved to Dudenin, New Zealand. Actually, she no longer teaches, but she now works for the New Zealand Ministry of Education. The branch within the Ministry she works for is Information and Communication Technology. Her duties are to help teachers facilitate technology into the class room.

Ms. Nicholls said that her interest in technology was peaked in 1999 when she found a computer in the back of the classroom that was not being used. The first way she used it her classroom of middle school students was using it in math lessons. From math lessons she took her exploration to using it to enhance the students love and enjoyment of reading.

She discovered podcasting and starting integrating that into her curriculum. She would have students write a story and then record it as a podcast. She said that this was a major success. After podcasting she began experimenting with movie making. She said the students made movies using still images, moving images, and handwritten images to tell their stories just like in the podcasts.

Ms. Nicholls said that she discovered a contest called Netguide WebChallenge. She got her kids to enter their stories into the contest through website design. In the third year of entering the contest one of her students won second place. The girl who won created a website about endangered wildlife in New Zealand. She said through the process from podcasts to website design her students became extraordinary story tellers of both fiction and non-fiction narratives.

She said that she stopped teaching in the classroom to help other teachers learn to use technology as well in their classrooms. She says that technology allows students to extend themselves in ways that they never could before. Ms. Nicholls said that technology amplifies a students voice. I really like one of her statements, "Remember technology amplifies! You want the product that technology amplifies to be a worthwhile product. That means the learning has to be the focus".