Success Stories from 2003

Each year the Techmobile Instructor identifies students and sites that have taken full advantage of the mobile computer lab and highlights the gains in these short summaries.

Graphs and Kids

The focus this summer was on providing proof of measurable gain in student achievement in compliance with the No Child Left Behind Act. We pre-tested and post-tested and in some cases, it feels like all we did was test. Despite this focus on assessment, the Techmobile at least was able to show significant gains in students' technology skills. However, the best gains are not the ones that can be shown on colorful bar graphs. The best gains are best seen in a narrative format.

One would notice when looking at the color-coded graphs I made of the test scores from this summer that particular advancements were made in the areas of presentation and graphics programs. However, the charts do not tell the whole story. Many of the students I work with have used computers before, at least in a superficial manner, but many of them have never had the chance to use them as learning tools. This is why we spent most of the summer preparing presentations about stories and novels being read in class with Summer Success. Rather than focusing on how to use PowerPoint or on how to insert a picture, we focused on how to retell a story. The best quotation from a student I heard this summer is one that I never heard: "I can't learn this program. It's too hard." Students were so focused on telling the story that they did not notice that they were learning significant technology skills along the way.

The youngest students are not quite ready for PowerPoint instruction, so we work on shapes, letters, numbers and fine motor skills needed to operate a mouse. The successes of the Techmobile can be illustrated by a young boy I'll call Esteban. His parents who had recently immigrated from Mexico were in Polson to pick cherries. He came to school speaking no English and had never used a computer before. We started with the very basics. I had to show him that moving the mouse moved the arrow on the screen and that pushing a button would make the computer do something he wanted. For two days he sat with his nose two inches from the screen, concentrating on moving the mouse where he wanted it to go. As the days went by, he sat back more relaxed and was better able to keep up with the instructions that I gave in both English and Spanish. By the end of the week and a half I was there, I knew he had learned something when his print jobs of dinosaurs, monsters and basketball players dried out my ink cartridge. His progress probably didn't improve the bar graph much, but the gains he made are astounding nonetheless.

The high school students are beyond my technology assessment (which is based on fourth grade standards). However, they do need and utilize the computers in the Techmobile. This summer for two weeks in Sidney, Montana, I had as many as 11 high school students on the bus working on eleven different writing assignments. They were completing complex instructions, writing narrative poems, doing comparative cultural studies, studying for Spanish exams, making brochures and a host of other activities. Their patience and diligence never cease to amaze me. They would talk of the 4 a.m. mornings out in the sugar beet fields covered head to foot in thick clothing avoiding the pernicious mosquitoes, but baking in the daily hundred-degree weather. Yet they still worked very hard, and many of them completed high school credits.

Though bar graphs make it quick and easy to see what gains have been made, they do not show the truly inspiring advances that many students make. The little pink bus makes people look twice, but it's the learning that goes on inside that would make them stare.

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