Teachers take a byte out of summer vacation

Danette Goulet

NEWPORT-MESA -- As technology advances by leaps and bounds, teachers

in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District are taking care that it

doesn’t get too far ahead of them.

Fourteen teachers from Costa Mesa, Corona del Mar and Newport Beach

all spent a week at a summer camp. And it had nothing to do with surfing,

swimming, tennis or basketball.

This camp focused on skills such as creating Web pages and preparing

class projects and lesson plans on the computer. The teachers also were

instructed on innovative and effective ways to use technology in the

classroom.

“It gave me the opportunity to spend a good week fine-tuning my skills

with programs like PowerPoint,” said Jenith Mishne, a sixth-grade teacher

at Rea Elementary School in Costa Mesa. “They showed us ways to integrate

computers into the classroom, besides playing games or searching the

Internet -- ways to use it as a tool to teach.”

The program, called Teach the Teachers Collaborative, offers

instructors one-week training sessions on how to use technology as a tool

for helping engage students in new avenues of learning.

It is funded mainly by Vons/Pavilions, which underwrote the program

this past year with a $6.1-million grant.

The idea is to use computers seamlessly, said Ronn Waters, a

fourth-grade teacher at Rea.

Mishne and Waters, who are a part of a new technology academy at Rea,

will now be able to create interactive lesson plans on computers to help

teach students.

“The idea is to use computers and technology to assist and expand

their learning, because there’s a lot of things you can do with a

computer that you can’t do with a pencil and paper,” he explained.

The Rea duo signed up for the Math and Technology workshop, which is

one of more than 50 workshops teachers could choose from.

Christine McKinley, a sixth-grade teacher at Lincoln Elementary School

in Corona del Mar, took a Web Quest workshop in which she designed a

program to teach students about ancient civilizations such as Greece,

Rome and China.

McKinley’s is one of nearly 100 programs that are currently on the

Internet for anyone to use.

Julie Brogan, a kindergarten teacher at Adams Elementary School in

Costa Mesa, studied Photoshop. She plans to take that knowledge back to

teachers and students in Newport-Mesa and to create a new Web site for

the school.

“It was unbelievably valuable information,” she said.

Besides bringing the knowledge back to their students, each of the 14

teachers has committed to spending 10 hours teaching others what they

learned.

“It was literally the best staff development I went to this year, and

I had just gone to a district technology proficiency training,” Waters

said.