Articles of Interest
Using Technology to Advance Your Afterschool Program
Here’s something you already know:
most kids love to use computers. If you are fortunate enough
to have access to computers and other technology in your afterschool
program, how can you ensure that you are making the most of
your resources?
“Although it might be tempting to let them blow off
steam by playing computer games, students will benefit more
from your technology program if you and your staff are intentional
and know what you want them to learn,” says Marilyn Heath,
a program associate at the National Partnership for Quality
Afterschool Learning at SEDL. Heath oversaw the production
of the technology portion of the National
Partnership’s Afterschool Training Toolkit, a staff
development resource organized around six promising practices
in afterschool that have been shown to improve student performance
in school. Heath points to “gathering
and sharing information,” one of the toolkit’s
six practices, as a way to engage students in interesting activities
while teaching them critical-thinking skills. With this practice,
students use technology to record information about the world
around them, analyze it, and share their findings with others.
In “The
Monarch Butterfly Watch,” for example, students
participate in an international migration research project
where they record changes in daylight and temperature, and
any observations of monarch butterflies in their various
stages of growth. They submit their information to an online
project called the Journey
North, which receives data from participants in Mexico,
the United States, and Canada and generates maps that track
the butterflies’ migration north every spring. “Instead
of reading about monarch butterflies in a book, students
are studying them in their community and using the Internet
to contribute to scientific research and connect with other
schools to learn how butterflies behave in other parts of
the country,” Heath says. The Journey North also tracks
migration patterns of other animals and collects data on
when various plants bloom across the country.
Read this story in the May
2007 issue of Afterwords.
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