Long-distance learning

Topeka Capital-Journal, The, Apr 20, 2006 by Barbara Hollingsworth

By Barbara Hollingsworth

THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

Austin Neher already knows some Spanish, and the high school freshman wants to learn mandarin Chinese for future travels.

His Washburn Rural High School classmate, freshman John Ma, hopes to communicate better with his family, some of whom still reside in China. Both will get the chance to begin learning China's main dialect in the fall when Washburn Rural becomes the first Shawnee County school to offer instruction in the language.

WRHS associate principal Bob Gladfelter said he began to hear requests for instruction in the language as China became a bigger player globally.

"If you want to go into international business in college and you can go into college and say, 'I've had two years of Chinese already,' what a big advantage," he said.

But schools already face a shortage of foreign language teachers in the more commonly taught subjects of Spanish, French and German. So Washburn Rural will provide mandarin Chinese instruction using a network linking instructors and schools called the Greenbush Interactive Distance Learning Network. The Auburn-Washburn Unified School District 437 school board signed off on the plan last month.

Washburn Rural students and teachers already are familiar with the technology that will beam the image of a native speaker teaching from The University of Kansas into their classroom.

Each day, Washburn-Rural is on the sending side of such lessons, providing instruction in Spanish and French to small high schools in the state, where size makes offering a variety of courses a bigger challenge. A peak into Christina Beard's seventh-hour French class gave a view of system from that end.

A half hour into Beard's class Wednesday afternoon, her students - from the 11 who aresitting in her Washburn Rural classroom to the four who are 65 miles away at Central Heights High School in Richmond and the two who are 48 miles away at Northern Heights High School in Allen - hunched over their papers, scrawling answers to a quiz.

Images of her Central Heights and North Central students were projected onto a screen. In their Richmond and Allen classrooms, Beard's students followed her lessons with a live video feed, watching as she wrote phrases on a white board and listening to her words, which are captured by a microphone clipped to her shirt.

Suddenly, the students in Central Heights froze in mid-motion. As they came online a few seconds later, they said Beard looked fuzzy.

"You look like a scary movie," a Central Heights student joked.

"Great," Beard said before launching into her lesson.

Technology glitches happen. The teachers who work with the program said planning helps, but they have learned to scrap those plans.

"It's made me a better teacher, and a lot better on my feet," said Ann Hendrickson, a Washburn Rural teacher who has taught Spanish courses on the network for four years. "If Plan A doesn't work, sometimes you're onto Plan G."

Beard has been in the same place as her distance learning students. As a high school student, she took a Russian course on television and found it difficult. She knows that interaction with students isn't the same.

But field trips to the schools give the students a chance to meet each other. Hendrickson has even traveled to see two of her distance schools compete against each other in rival football and basketball games. And she continues to hear from her distance learning alumni.

"My students who are in college now are doing fine," she said.

Beard and Hendrickson are interested to see how it works when Washburn Rural students are on the receiving end of distance learning instruction with the Mandarin Chinese I course. Both said the students will have to stay focused and involved in the lessons.

"I think they're going to learn what kind of learners they are," Beard said.

Students planning on taking the course said they aren't worried about not having a teacher physically in their classroom.

"I really don't think I'd mind very much," said sophomore Anastacia Culbertson.

"As long as I can learn it, either way can work," said freshman Neher.

Barbara Hollingsworth can be reached

at (785) 295-1285 or

barbara.hollingsworth@cjonline.com.