DECATUR — Technology has allowed the Decatur High School Advanced Placement English Literature classroom to expand all the way to Greenville, S.C.

High school students in Decatur and Greenville are connecting through the Internet to study George Orwell’s novel, “Nineteen Eighty-four.”

The two classes with radically different demographics and environment interact using edmoto.com, a secure social learning network designed specifically for teachers and students, and Skype.

Decatur High School English and journalism teacher James Garner and Rachel Stokes, English teacher at the Greenville High Academy of Law, Finance and Business, are collaborating on the project.

The two teachers met while reading advanced placement tests in Louisville, Ky., over the summer and conceived the idea serendipitously, Stokes said.

“We said, ‘Wouldn’t it be neat if we could Skype between our classrooms?,’” she said.

After researching the idea, Stokes found that another South Carolina high school had already done a similar collaborative project with a high school in Canada and was actually able to meet with the teacher and gather a lot of materials and information.

Using the Internet and technology in education is a hot topic, according to Stokes.

“Educators are looking to hit kids where they live, and they live on the Internet,” she said.

The two teachers planned to use the interactive approach while they study “Nineteen Eighty-four.” So far, the students really seem to enjoy the experience, especially typing to each other about themselves, Garner said. The students seem to relate the online discussions to Facebook, although they have to shift their focus from social to academic, he said.

The Greenville metro area has a population of 636,986, according to the 2010 census, and the high school alone has 1,436 students - nearly the entire population of Decatur.

Despite the fact that the 21 students in Stokes’ classroom and 16 students in Garner’s classroom live in very different settings, they have found more similarities than differences, Stokes said.

With nothing more to judge each other by than a mug shot, the Internet quickly strips away any stereotypical barriers that might keep the students from communicating under normal circumstances, Stokes explained.

“Their biggest reaction is that they realize these kids are all like them,” she said.

Another positive for theprogram is that students learn the standards of teachers all over the country, Stokes said.

“It’s not just mean old Mr. Garner or mean old Mrs. Stokes,” she said.

The online discussion also prepares students for the online classes they will almost certainly face in college and sets a standard for proper discourse over the Internet - no lower case only sentences or illegible “texting” language allowed.

Stokes and Garner keep a close eye on the online posts and do a lot of modeling to show students what they expect. Their watchful eye also relates well to the plot of the novel, published in 1948, which imagines a very different world by the year 1984.

“Mr. Garner and I have taken on the role of big brother by watching their discussions,” Stokes said.

The only snag the teachers have run into is technology. Ironically, because Greenville County School District is so large and there are so many people on the Internet at a time, getting enough bandwidth to use Skype can be a challenge. In contrast, not all students in Decatur have Internet access at home, so they have to do all their posting to the discussion boards from school.

Garner said the project will last for five weeks, while the two classes are studying the novel, and then be evaluated to see if it should be continued.

School News, Pages 8 on 11/30/2011