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You will find Caroline’s story refreshing
and encouraging. This celebrated technology whiz describes herself as
a humble, "language artsy" type who dared to give technology
a try. And she has come a long way – from a Chapter 1 reading teacher
with two Apple IIEs and no tech know-how to Technology and Learning’s
1996 National Technology Teacher with an electronic publishing lab and
a globally recognized, student authored web magazine, Midlink.
Caroline’s philosophy of teaching is clearly evident in her use of
technology. "Just open the gate and let them out, " she says,
"It is amazing what kids can accomplish . . . I don’t think
that adults give kids enough credit. I am always amazed by what they can
do when they have the tools and the freedom to use them." To see how his students'
thought about the project and Caroline's curriculum
idea. |
MT: They just didn’t get it, did they? Good for you.
That’s basically all of my serious questions. I have some fun ones. Oh,
I did want to ask what’s your top five websites?
McCullem:
I love Web 66 and Stephen
Collins is a friend of mine who does an excellent job there. I also
like a new website that Gwen Solomon is doing now. It’s The
Well Connected Educator, and it provides a forum for teachers to share.
They have topics for discussion. It’s really good. It’s relatively
new. There are some new ones. ED’s Oasis is sponsored by Bell
South and Terry Gray from Pepperdine is doing that
one. She has done a great job of bringing teachers in and getting information
from them much the way you’re doing.
Search engines – that’s what we do most of in our class. We use
them for researching the net. I really love Alta Vista and Hot Bot. Hot Bot is one I don’t think a lot
of people use. It is one of the newer search engines, and it is easier than
a lot of them You know you’re trying to do this Boolean search, and,
you say, "I wonder if I put in a plus or and and?"
Well, in Hot Bot it’s a pop up menu and you can do a search for any
of the words, the exact phrase, all of the words. It’s really easy
plus it’s fast.
MT: Thank you. That’s helpful. My last question is
to describe your dream project to be funded by Bill Gates?
McCullem:
I want to do video integrated with the web. That’s one of the things
we’re going to try to do in this lab this year. We’re going to
try to experiment with live video feeds through cable. We want to film some
teachers in classrooms and record some of the excellent things that are
already going on in the classrooms across North Carolina and send those
out in a lot of video. Now if you’ve never experienced that, it’s
not like the slow, little mpeg. This is directly through video -- from a
cable TV and it just ends up being in a little square box on your desktop.
That would be one way that we would do it. And we would also do streaming
video when we do this on a Windows NT server. There are new applications
that allow you to do really fast streaming video. So for those people who
weren’t around for the broadcast for this live video; hopefully, we’ll
be able to have some of those captured, and they can go in and log in to
the page and anytime they want to they can see this streaming video.
MT: Wow,
that is exciting. Eric on campus has been talking about that for some time.
He was talking with some company about doing that so maybe there’s
someone interested in funding that if Bill Gates doesn’t come through
.
McCullem:
Well, if you see him. Tell him we’ve got the kids and this would be
through this Teachers Connect center at NCDPI and we are looking for a way
to make that happen. The proposal is already written.