Kentucky Teacher

The school bell rings and a student looks up from her smartphone, where she’s been chatting via Facebook with a boy from Brazil. They are working collaboratively on a project about each other’s home country.

The teacher, skyping from a neighboring district, in Portuguese tells the girl and her classmates to take the first 15 minutes of class to use their smartphones or iPads to answer the question posted on the interactive white board. Many students start by looking in their e-textbook, which their teacher compiled before the semester started. Others simply go to Google.

Once the 15 minutes are over, the teacher directs the students to a website where they have to use what they have learned to help an Indiana Jones-like explorer complete missions. It’s more like a video game than a quiz, but the teacher can tell by how they do who did the work and who didn’t. She’ll send those who didn’t do well an e-mail with links to the information after school, along with an assignment for them to turn in – electronically, of course – the next day.

This and similar scenes will be typical in Kentucky schools if David Cook at the Kentucky Department of Education and other drafters of a recent report can bring their vision to fruition. Read the full story

Teachers should use technology for betterment of students, Barren County tech leader says

By Matthew Tungate
matthew.tungate@education.ky.gov

In what has become a familiar scene, Benny Lile was greeted with numerous well wishes from his Facebook friends on his birthday in January. But for Lile, director of Instruction and Technology for the Barren County school district, a message from a former student who works in Centre College’s IT department stood out.

“He said, ‘I still give you credit for telling me how to cut and paste that day in the 6th grade for starting my technology career.’ ” Read the full story