Sadako and the One Thousand Cranes Dot Guthrie, Media Specialist Winding Springs Elementary

Article Contents Ms. Dot Guthrie Ms. Sharon Palichat Students Lesson Plan

Dot Guthrie is an educator with a vision. And it is not surprising that a media specialist would find a way to link together her love of literature and learning with technology to make that vision come true. In this interview Dot speaks of the compelling world-wide web peace project that she designed and implemented with fifth-grade teacher Sharon Palichat. Both Dot and Sharon talk about the project's wide success and of their other beginning efforts to bring the world to Winding Springs Elementary.

MIDtech (MT): Tell us about your vision . . .

Dot: My vision for these children and for the world? Well, I have always been told about the paradigm in education (see references). And I can see email, especially email, shattering the paradigm in education, the 2X4 paradigm in education, meaning the two covers of the book, the four walls in the classroom which means that we are going to bring the children from the world out there into our school and into our classroom. We're going to tap in on various cultures and we are going to meet new friends across the world. That's my vision. But now I want a little of both and I will tell you that and I am a little greedy, I guess, when it comes to dropping one and taking up another. I also want to have the opportunity to maintain the integration of my information skills into the classroom lessons as well as reaching out there and grasping what the twentieth-first century holds for us. That's why Sharon Palichat's and I worked together to develop a project entitled, One Thousand Reasons for World Peace. Sharon has been teaching in the classroom, WWW II and Japan, and I thought, perhaps, we could use a little book which is entitled, Sadako and the One Thousand Cranes. So I sat down, read the book to the sixth grade students and we all sort of cried together at the very end. And afterwards I thought that we needed more, we wanted more for Sadako. We wanted her legacy to live on and on. Yes, we are dreamers. We want to see the world be a better place for us all. We talked about it with Sharon. We asked if her class would be willing to participate in a project entitled, One Thousand Reasons for World Peace, and we put together a wonderful curriculum. And we have had nothing but success with that project once we put it out there on the Internet.

MT: Is this a long-term project? How long? And how long did it take you guys to get started?

Dot: Initially this project was planned as part of our Children's Book Week activities in November. We were going to let it stay on the internet until the end of January. However, because of the success which we encountered, we decided to carry it through the end of May and let it become a main attraction at our annual storytelling festival. At that time will culminate this activity by sponsoring a "Stand for World Peace Day" at the school. We are going to ask the people in Charlotte-Mecklenburg to come to our school and stand in support of world peace. We hope to have one thousand people standing from the front doors of Winding Spring Elementary School all the way up Horace Mann Rd and all the way down Gibbon Road.

MT: What a great culmination!

MT:Tell us about how you got started using the Internet to support your instructional curriculum?

Dot: We started using the Internet last year. The school is just two years old. And I was very excited. I have always wanted to have the opportunity to explore and to find out what was out there and to find out how many different cultures I could tap into. So, knowing that we had Netscape, here, and knowing that it was going to enhance our educational curriculum, I could hardly wait to get my fingers on the keyboard. We first had to send out an Internet access agreement policy to those parents giving us permission to allow their children to search the Internet. Once those agreement forms were returned to us, I sat down at the computer and complied a list so every teacher in the school would know which children in the school had that permission from parents to use the Internet. So we started like that. And knowing that I wanted to do something special to make it exciting and to know that I had finally arrived, I did a project last year entitled, Justin and the Best Biscuits in the World. I worked with a fourth grade class, and I asked them to bring in some of their favorite recipes for biscuits. And then I said, Now, let's go into cyberspace and find out where the best biscuits in the world are. So we put our question on the Web, and, immediately, we began to receive responses. We compiled a book. And one funny thing came from London. A gentlemen wrote to me and said that, "You know, biscuits are called different things in various parts of the world". And he said, "Here, in England, a biscuit is considered a cookie". And I shared that with my fourth-grade students. We had a wonderful time. Various schools from across the world send in their favorite biscuit recipes. We compiled a book using some of the recipes that we had.

MT: Good start. How many students actually signed on the first year. About half?

Dot: We allowed those students in grades 3 through 5. We gave them that opportunity. Last year we were K-5. This year we're K-6. And in the fall we will go back to K-5. So I guess we had about 75% of the students in grades 3 through 5 to sign up.

MT: So, I think many educators would like to know how you handled 75% of your students with only a few computers.

Dot: Oh, no, not only a few. There are two computers in every classroom, and we have a computer lab. And we have six computers in the media center plus I have one in my office. And later you will see that those six computers will be utilized by the students and even the one in my office.

MT: And how do you work the logistics of that. Are there teams?

Dot: The teachers try to make sure each day that every child in the classroom has at least thirty minutes a day at the computer.

MT: And what are those backup plans?

Dot: The backup plan is to go back into the reference room and use some of the hardcover books that we have to do research that I had initially meant for them to do at the computer.

MT: Do you find that there are discipline problems when you have that many in a team?

Dot: No, they are all anxious to participate. To get their little fingers on the keyboard. And they anxiously await their turn. We don't have a problem with that.

MT: And how do you handle discipline at each of the stations when you have maybe 5 or 6 kids per station?

Dot: We really don't have any discipline problems because they are all anxiously awaiting their turn. And they are all excited about having the opportunity to use the computers. They know that they are going to have their glory so they wait their turn.

MT: What are their favorite sites on the Internet? Have you found that there are one or two sites that they always go to first?

Dot: Well, I know that they love going into Yahoo and they can find lots and lots of information there. The Internet has been used heavily during the month of February because this is African History month. And you know there are so many important contributions and achievements that are made by African Americans that we can't find them all in books and when children come in and sat down at the computer and go to one of those search engines like Lycos or Yahoo they can pull up lots and lots of information.

I love to visit the Library of Congress mainly because I have a book waiting to receive copyright status. Often times, I will send book reviews to Amazon, the world's largest bookstore. I have the Scholastic Network in the media center which I use often.

MT: What changes in classroom communities have you seen as you and the teachers at your school have begun to use technology more and more?

Dot: I have seen cooperative learning work at its best. We are a midpoint school, which means that we service children from a very diverse background. However, while working on this project [Peace Project], these children forgot about their social environments and worked collectively to produce quality work.

MT: Are there any down sides associated with using technology?

Dot: I could perhaps say that the down side of technology would come when these children have very little time to explore, expand, and appreciate this new learning tool since they have a limited amount of time to spend at the computer each day. And, that children from low-socioeconomic backgrounds can't have a continuation of this newly found excitement once they leave school because the only technology they have in their homes are televisions and telephones.

MT: How about a dream project that Bill Gates could fund?

Dot: I did write the Gates Library Foundation. In my email to the foundation, I expressed my concern over the fact that they had chosen public libraries over schools to receive funds. I wanted them to know that more children from low-income areas attended school than visited the public libraries. In fact, I told them that when I worked as an outreach librarian for the Gaston County Public Library years ago, we took library service to children who never knew that a public library existed. The Gates foundation should consider providing funds for schools so that many of these underprivileged children could have access to computers which they could carry home for family literacy and enrichment.

MT: That's a great idea ñ one that could help to lessen the difference between the "have's" and "have-not's"

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Sharon Palichat, Fifth Grade Teacher

MT: Describe what you and Mrs. Guthrie did to come up with this project, A Thousand Reasons for World Peace.

Sharon: Miss Guthrie played a much larger part in that than I did. She talked to me about our curriculum and she really wanted to read the book about Sadako and the thousand paper cranes. We wanted to see if we could incorporate that into our curriculum because we study WWW II more on the central European part of it. I thought if she covered the Japanese side of the war in here then they would see the full effect of the war rather than just a chunk of the European side. And so she helped to develop an idea for the kids to send messages on Internet.

MT: So did you get any reactions from that yet?

Sharon: We got reactions from Singapore, from Japan, and from various cities in the United States.

MT: Did you find that meaningful to the students? Did they really take to that kind of interaction.

Sharon: Yes, they did. Especially the one interview that we got from a Japanese bomb survivor and one of the classes sent that because they had a speaker come into their class and they shared that information with us as well as their book reviews. It's interesting to see the kids and that if it's something that their interested in that they can get other people excited about ,too. It's pretty powerful.

MT: I think so, too. What's the best thing that you think has come out of this project so far?

Sharon: The best thing I would say is that they can see how they can pull all of these things in the media center but maybe haven't use as one project. So it kind of helped pull it all together for them.

MT: They can see it as tools and resources.

Sharon: Yes, they actually can now.

MT: What other ways have you used the Internet? Have you gotten into it as a teacher, personally planning lessons or have you used it personally to help you better yourself in the classroom.

Sharon: Actually, the students are probably better at using it than I am and I am just learning it this year. So, it's been a challenge for me to kind of get familiarized with the Internet.

MT: But do you think it has potential for you in that area?

Sharon: Oh, yes, definitely! It definitely has potential for all teachers.

MT: Any special sites that you have come across so far that have been important to you?

Sharon: Basically the ones that I have looked for are the ones that the children are interested in. So we have pulled up information about Japan and the bombing and it's more related to what the children are doing than my own personal interests.

MT: How about the logistics?

Sharon: We have managed the children rotating on and off the computers and making sure that everyone had a chance. We set aside a time in the afternoon where the students were working on this project and we have a computer lab that the children were able to go to in the afternoon where the children all had their own computer. But then in the classroom, we only have two computers so we rotate. And it's pretty much that if you need it that day then you have first priority to it. That worked out pretty well because they did a lot of research on Hiroshima and other areas of WWW II, so they all had to take their turn.

MT: Pretty much, everyone had enough time then because you do have the lab.

Sharon: We have the lab and also kids could come into the media center. We can send them down a few at a time to use the computers in here as well. So they had plenty of opportunity to all get on a computer.

MT: So this media center is flexibly scheduled?

Sharon: Extremely! It's probably one of the most flexible that I have come across.

MT: What could you say about that?

Sharon: Our media center is based on the idea that if you have a project going on in your class, we have passes so I can send 3 or 4 kids at any time into this media center. But they also left time in the schedule for the media specialist to be available to us. If we want her to do a special lesson for a class or if we just want us to help us with special things like the Internet. Basically, her schedule is so flexible that she works with us in any way that we need her.

MT: How about the keeping the kids on track on the Internet?

Sharon: I think that the best way that we keep the kids on track when they are on the Internet rather than straying on subjects that are of interest to them that don't relate to the topic that they are studying is that we give them something very specific that they have to find and they have to be able to prove to us that they found something on that. That keeps them from thinking that they can just surf the web the way that they want.

MT: How do you think the integration of technology affects the social context of the classroom and how students and teachers and students and students live and work together?

Sharon: Thereís more of a sense of togetherness, accomplishment.

MT: Is there a down side or any problems that hinder the classroom community when technology is introduced?

Sharon: No, at times it takes awhile to implement the use of new technology. Impatience may be a problem a teacher faces. Once the students are comfortable with it though it's incredible!

MT: What kind of technology projects are your favorites?

Sharon: Projects that teach youngsters how to reach out to the community, become a factor in the community, and take pride in the difference they can make.

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References:

School Library Media Activities Monthly Magazine, April 1997.

David D. Thornburg, Education, Technology, and Paradigms of Change for the 21st Century. Starsong Publications, 1991.