Alabama city to try full day of school online

MOUNTAIN BROOK, Ala. (AP) — An experiment in light waves using lasers. A lesson in how to travel in French speaking countries. A contest shouting “Stella!” in honor of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire.

Those are the ingredients for a full day of school — online. Teachers at Mountain Brook schools are getting ready for the system’s first e-day, which will allow students to receive instruction and assignments over the Internet.

Mountain Brook studied how to implement e-days for about six months, and the need to make up two school days because of January’s snowfall presented an opportunity. School officials consulted schools which have had e-days in Ohio, New Jersey and Kentucky.

Saturday will be the first time a public school system in Alabama has attempted an e-day, said Mountain Brook Technology Coordinator Donna Williamson.

“It’s a great opportunity to go further with them than we do in the classroom,” said John Binet, an instructor in math and French at Mountain Brook High School.

On two Saturdays, this week and May 7, students in Mountain Brook’s elementary, middle and high schools will do their work at home without physically attending school. About 98 percent of Mountain Brook students have home Internet access. The remaining 2 percent may work from computers at the Emmet O’Neal Library or on laptops loaned from the school system. The school system has identified sites in Mountain Brook with free wi-fi.

Ushering in a new kind of instruction presented a challenge to teachers at every school in coming up with lesson plans to take advantage of online resources.

For example, how do you show students how the planets move? The solution: An online simulation. Sue Davis, an advanced placement physics teacher at Mountain Brook High School, said students can also see simulated experiments online.

“Some of these labs would be too expensive or dangerous to conduct, so you use online simulations that help the student understand,” Davis said.

In some ways, the e-day will be no different from daily online assignments the students are already doing, she said. “Some of them don’t even know where their textbook is right now, because all our homework is done online,” Davis said.

Holly Martin, an advanced American history teacher, will give her students assignments to find information on historical websites or videos on YouTube. The lessons will probably deal with the beginning of the Civil War, which some of her students are covering at the moment.

Then, students will use chat forums on the school’s Internet program, Moodle, to communicate with Martin and their classmates about the assignment. Students will have 10 days to complete their e-day assignments.

Melinda Cammarata, an AP English teacher, said her students will view an online clip of a “Stella!” shouting contest in New Orleans as part of their study of Tennessee Williams’ play. Binet said some of his French students will read a French mystery and discuss the French police and judicial system.

“It’ll be things they can’t do completely on their own,” he said. “Teacher interaction is going to be the key to this.”

For elementary school students, some teachers are working to make the e-day experience as close to a normal day of school as possible. For example, some first graders will go to Moodle, an educational website, and find links to the Pledge of Allegiance, which is how they usually start their days. Then students will receive a checklist of tasks and links that will take them to their assignments. Some will also get exercise assignments to duplicate physical education periods.

Martin said the experience of preparing an e-lesson can be slightly intimidating.

“But it’s also exciting to begin this process,” she said. “We’re trying to make the information relevant in a different way. It’ll be exciting to see how it’s going to work.”

Once the first e-day is completed, teachers and administrators will get feedback from students and parents about how the classes were conducted. Any suggestions could then be incorporated into the second e-day two weeks later.

“Technology is the language these kids speak,” Binet said. “We want to make sure it’s done right.”

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