School Trip to the Martin Luther Schule Marburg
The field trip to the Martin Luther Schule Marburg was very informative. The teacher Ann-Katrin Fernandez showed us around and gave us some very essential and useful information about the school. Moreover, we still had enough time to ask questions about the general topic "New Media in School."
At first, Ann-Kathrin told us about the technical equipment of the school: Beside one big computer room, or rather two smaller ones which are connected by a door, the school has a class set of laptops which can be reserved by the teachers and then used by the students. The school also possesses a digital as well as a video camera. In addition, the school owns a kind of a "compact case" which consists of a projector, a laptop, and a sound system. All these individual elements are already connected to each other which I think is very handy instead of setting all of them up independently. In order to reserve those different technical tools, the teachers have to assign in a computer program. This way they know in advance if a certain medium might not be available.
In addition, the school has big flat screens in certain class rooms that can be connected with a laptop and then be used to show, for example, movies, presentations, or pictures.
Our group went to one of the computer rooms where Ann-Kathrin answered our questions and where she gave some more general information.
Concerning my question of she liked the great variety of media that was available she told us that she did so indeed. She likes to get to know new tools and to find out if she can use them in her own classes. She seemed to be very open-minded concerning new media that she might not know yet.
In this context, she also mentioned that some of her colleagues were not that open-minded and curious as she was herself. They rather sticked to their own methods they already knew quite well. This might be due to some kind of fear that students might not behave properly when they, for example, use the internet. To underline this assumption, she told us that sometimes special training sessions for teachers were offered in which it is explained how to use certain new programs. As an average just 30 out of 90 teachers took part in these trainings which demonstrates quite convincingly that most teachers actually did not want to use as much of the new media. However, Ann-Kathrin explained to us that one could actually control exactly what the students were doing on their computer. With the so-called "Master-Eye," a program, called "Mater Solution, which is installed on the teacher's computer, one can block the students' computers and follow exactly what they are doing. This way it is possible to bring some order to the exciting computer-environment in school.
Concerning my question if the school is, from Ann-Kathrin's point of view, sufficiently equipped to use new media, the teacher said it definitely was. She told us that it was actually no problem to reserve the tools one needs. Additionally, she again pointed out that actually not that many teachers used, for example, the computers. Therefore, there really was no need to purchase more.
Ann-Kathrin is a language teacher for German, English, and Spanish. She herself uses the computers about two or three time per month. However, teachers of other subjects might use them much more often. In mathematics or computer sciences, the computers are used much more frequently. The Martin Luther Schule also offers the option to take a computer science class from the 8th grade on. Here, the students learn how to create programs or how to use Exel professionally. This fact shows that it highly depends on the subject one is teaching how often the computers, and also other media, are being used in class.
Ann-Kathrin Fernandez strongly has the feeling that her students like to work with other media than just their books. Due to the teacher, they liked to do some research on the internet. Moreover, when she creates a web quest, they were very motivated to work on them. She told us the school gave the students a general introduction on how to use a computer in fifth grade. They learned, for example, how to create a word document. However, this introduction was really rather basic and if students did not frequently work on their skills, they quickly forgot some important information. The teacher told us that there were still some students who did not have a computer and internet at home or whose parents even forbade them to use these kinds of media. This is why some students might not be able to keep up with others if they have to complete a task using the computer.
One of her favorite tools, Ann-Katrin told us, is using and creating web quests. According to her, these were highly effective and the students were always very motivated to work on them. Another method, which I think is really valuable, is to tell the students to have "leo.org" opened when they are researching a topic or doing some other task. This way they can quickly and easily look up words without losing much time while still working on their task.
To sum up, the field trip to the Martin Luther Schule was very successful. Ann-Kathrin gave us some significant information about how her school, and especially she herself, makes use of the great variety of new media that is available. I also had the feeling that the school is very well equipped with certain tools that can be used by the students and by which a big variation of methods can be offered.
