Digital Learning, You Bet!

Students at Asher Public School are currently working on completing digital stories using the techniques I learned by attending the first Celebrating Oklahoma Voices workshop conducted by Dr. Dana Owens and Wesley Fryer. In order to accomplish this, we invited four WWII vets and one Korean/Vietnam vet to spend the day with our students. Three of the four vets served in the South Pacific and one in Europe. One gentleman from Ada, Oklahoma, Hank Thompson, U.S. Army, 27th Regiment, 25th Infantry , was drafted a week after high school. He was a flamethrower. The vets addressed the 7th - 12th grade in a public type forum on December 6th, 2007. Intermittently students were paired with vets to conduct personal interviews throughout the day using Olympus Digital Recorders and suggested interview guidelines from Ken Burns. Later that afternoon we participated in the live web cast from Pearl Harbor during the dedication ceremonies for the U.S.S. Oklahoma. Asher Public School was one of ten out of 74 schools chosen to participate. The vets stayed to watch the web cast also. Our students asked questions of two servicemen who survived the bombing of Pearl Harbor who were actually on the U.S.S. Oklahoma at the time it was bombed. As I introduced the vets that morning to the students I described the gentlemen as "virtual textbooks". The information the students' gained was unparalleled to that of studying a textbook alone. How many textbooks do you know that introduce students to an actual flamethrower? This project is the epitome of authentic learning. It clearly meets the PASS skill requirements. For example, Language Arts grades 9 through 12 Standard 4: Research and Information - 1(a) Access information from a variety of primary and secondary source documents; and 2 (e) Develop presentations by using clear research questions and creative and critical research strategies, such as field studies, oral histories, interviews, experiments, and Internet sources (grades 9 and 10 vary slightly). Digital learning engages students and prepares them to be 21st century learners.