Scott Morrison
Net Generation: Interview with a
First Year Teacher, Part 1
Blowing Rock Elementary School
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Scott Morrison |
Article Contents |
Scott Morrison is a teacher from the "Next Generation."
Or the "Net Generation" as Don Tapscott, author of Growing
Up Digital calls it. Scott was one of those adventurous youngsters
who grew up with technology. Integrating technology into the curriculum
comes naturally to him. The United Nations project is a sample of the
innovative projects he designed during his first year of teaching. He
is now enjoying his second year of teaching sixth grade at Blowing Rock
Elementary in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. |
MIDtech (MT):
How did you get your start with technology?
Morrison: My first beginnings with technology came when I was in high school. I learned to program Pascal and Basic. This experience prepared me for college. I know a lot of people are scared when they get to college and have to start using computers. It's because they don't know what to expect. They don't want to ask someone. When I came into college and student teaching, I was already prepared to work with computers. It's just something that I learned to do. It's almost like you go to the library to research for books you go to the Internet and you use the computer; you use email; it just becomes a natural thing. In my student teaching experience we were required to email our professors once a week and write about what we were learning, what we were doing, and send along a sample lesson plan. It was a listserve so we got to read what everyone else had written, too. My professors were always trying to incorporate technology into what we were doing.
MT: Did you find yourself working with other teachers, student teachers, collaborating in anyway?
Morrison: Yes, I actually had a team when I was student teaching. My partner taught math and language arts, and I taught science and social studies. Unfortunately I was at a different school for my student teaching, and we didn't have the same kind of Internet access that we do here.
MT: If the technology
all of a sudden disappeared, what would you find yourself doing?
Morrison: Tomorrow if technology no longer exists . . . my students would not have the same attitude about school. It seems like every day, I get the same questions, "Are we going to go to the computer lab today?" "Do we get to go on the Internet?" They enjoy technology probably more than I do. As you heard one of my students say, "You give us the freedom to go on the Internet and find what we want to find." That actually makes it a little easier on me because they get to explore their own information. They come up with things and show me and I learn a lot. There is no way I could have gone through and exhausted all the information they found today on the Internet. They found so much information that I was not even aware of. So they are teaching me; I'm teaching them. We are learning how to use it all together. I think that's what it's all about. We need students who can access the information and use it rather than a teacher who tells them everything to do.
MT: Do you find yourself surprised in any way by your students?
Morrison: Oh, yes, all the time. We went into the lab yesterday and I gave them just the United Nations (UN) prompt. I was so surprised when one of my students said, "Hey, Mr. Morrison, come over here, look what we found." It was the Cyber Schoolbus! They found it off the UN page. It has lots of games and activities about flags from different countries. There are guessing games, for example a "more or less people" game and a "cities versus rural areas" game. It's just great. I showed everyone in class how to get there, and we worked with it for about ten minutes. So my students discovered a page that we all learned a lot from.
MT: Can you
give some details about how you plan a project or a lesson?
Morrison: This project began as just an idea. We're studying countries in the sixth grade, and I let groups of students, cooperative learning groups, research different countries. Each group researched three countries and then was selected to represent one. So we have our own little United Nations. In two classes we have 16 countries represented. We had a big speech day and election to really build up this UN project. I began thinking about how I could incorporate the Internet. I thought, "Well, see if there is a UN page?" So I looked and found that the UN had a "humongous" page. I found all of these organizations and committees. I thought, "Hey, I wonder if this would be interesting to learn?" So I went to a few of them, and I found some good information. So I decided on a whim, "Okay, let's see if this works. Let's see if these kids enjoy it?" It turned out that they really did enjoy it.
MT: Where do you see this project going?
Morrison: Wherever they can take it that's where the project goes. I see them really interested in what's going on. When they can turn it into a class discussion or a debate or something where they get to free-think that's something they really like. They love the Internet no matter what. Some of those groups have had a lot of hard information to go through. But they wanted to go through it because it was different. It was their responsibility, their freedom, their choice of what they could do with it. And they like that. They like that responsibility.
MT: Can you
tell us a little bit more about this original activity with the UN?
Morrison: The original plan for looking at these countries was just to give my students an exposure to different countries in Europe. There are 16 groups in my two classes, and each group got to research three different countries. A lot of these were new countries in Europe with some of the constitutions being written between 1991 and 1993. Then each group made applications to become one of those countries. This was something I made up. It borders on the model UN which I didn't want to do because I do that in seventh grade. I wanted them to just get familiar with some of the countries in Europe. I made a sheet for them to research history, famous people, major world occurrences, and such. So they submitted those applications to me. It was a big deal to them. They wanted to be a certain country. It was a major ordeal in my classroom because almost half of my groups wanted to be France. They were selected to be a certain country. Then we had an election. They had to prepare speeches in their language arts class about why their country's representative should be elected secretary general of the United Nations. We had a three-hour speech day. It was a fun day. We had balloons with confetti. We had music. We had red carpets being rolled out. We had kids dancing on stage. It really was a lot of fun. They gave their speeches on why their country would be best person for the secretary general. They also gave us great information on what their country had done in the past. We had secret ballots. In the election we found out that Switzerland was the most popular group. They had the most extra features in their campaign. The kids respected that group the most because they put a lot of work into it. It was a fun day. So this was an extension of that. It was going beyond what we did with books in the library.