Decatur teacher speaks at Las Vegas convention

English and journalism teacher James Garner, South Carolina teacher Rachel Stokes speak of experience in video classroom

— Decatur High School teacher James Garner and his teaching partner Rachel Stokes of Greenville South Carolina spoke at the National Council of Teachers of English national convention in Las Vegas last month.

The two teachers gave a 75-minute presentation, titled Literacy in the 21st Century, which shared their experience using video conferencing and online discussion to connect their two Advanced Placement Literature classrooms some 900 miles apart.

More than 5,500 teachers were expected to attend the annual event, held Nov. 15-19, according to the NCTE website, www. Ncte. Org.

Garner and Stokes gave a Friday afternoon presentation to a group of approximately 35 educators at the MGM Grand Hotel Convention Center. The audience asked lots of encouraging questions, and people seemed really interested, Garner said.

“One lady was extremely excited,” he said.

The convention offered many presentations for all levels of teachers, and Garner and Stokes also had an opportunity to attend many other presentations during the conference and meet with other teachers and administrators, they said.

“We really got an idea where education is going,” Stokes said. “I feel like it was a very, very good educational, professional development experience. It affirmed that what we are doing is innovating and challenging,”

Garner, who teaches English and journalism in Decatur, and Stokes, who teaches at the Greenville High Academy of Law, Finance and Business, met several years ago while reading Advanced Placement tests over the summer. The teachers devised a project to connect their Advanced Placement classrooms to study George Orwell’s novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four” together using Skype and Edmoto, a secure social learning network similar to Facebook.

The format of the project prepares students for online classes in college. Edmoto is very similar to Blackboard, which is used by the University of Arkansas, Garner said.

The project also brought out some students who didn’t talk much in class, Garner said. They felt much more comfortable expressing their opinions in the online forum than in person.

Garner and Stokes cowrote a paper about their experience and submitted it to the NCTE. Last May, they received word they had been chosen to speak at the convention

Since the project, Stokes has done professional development within her district three times, showing other teachers how to use Edmoto and other online resources. The teachers will also be featured on a radio show, “Speaking of Education,” in South Carolina in January or February.

Garner and Stokes learned a lot during their first year of the project and have since conquered a number oftechnological barriers. Both schools did not have enough Internet bandwidth to efficiently use sites like Skype.

Decatur’s administrators, superintendent Larry Ben and federal programs coordinator Mitch Wilber, came to theclassroom and observed the problems Garner and Stokes encountered last year. They made a commitment to upgrade Decatur’s technology, and this year students will have plenty of bandwidth, as well as access to laptop and iPad carts.

This year Garner is teaching AP non-fiction and Stokes is teaching AP literature. They have learned a lot from their previous experience, and now they’re planning to let their students study "Crime and Punishment" together next semester.

News, Pages 8 on 12/19/2012