On Thursday, October 13th, I took an inter-island flight from Kona to Honolulu (which is on the island of Oahu) to visit Punahou School. Punahou school is the oldest and largest independent school in the United States. There are over 3,000 students in grades K-12 at Punahou.
After the flight and a drive through Honolulu, I reached the school and parked. I weaved my way from the parking lot through the college-like campus past Bishop Hall. At 9:00 am I met Doug Kiang in front of Castle Hall. I am very grateful that Doug arranged a full day of visiting and observations at the Punahou School. We proceeded through the elementary school area of the campus. One of the first, most interesting sights, was the line of shoes outside one of the third grade classrooms. It is customary in Hawaiian culture to remove your "slippers" when entering a home. Doug also explained, as we past a common area, that part of the third grade curriculum is learning about Hawaii. In the common area the students were growing taro, a staple of the Hawaiian diet.
We continued through the building up to a fourth grade classroom. Kris Schwengel welcomed us into his room where 26 students were busy working on their personal MacBooks. Each student, starting in fourth grade, is issued their own personal MacBook. The kids were very engaged in their writing projects. They were writing stories and posting them online and then they were providing feedback for each other. During that time, Kris showed me around his room and explained some of what they do throughout the year. The fourth grade classes travel to Maui and one culminating project is mapping the elevation. In their classroom they have a 3D cutter and software to create the projects. They also use software to learn how to make scale models.
Next the students, who were divided into four table groups, each worked on a different activity on their MacBooks. They worked on movies, animations, comics and an interactive writing project. The next activity was an interactive lesson with the Promethean board. The students were working on learning about money. Kris used the Promethean clickers to take a quick survey. The class continued their discussion about the characteristics of money using a flipchart. Afterwards, the kids then began working on their own unique money, which needed to include all the necessary components they had learned about.
The last activity I observed in the class was their Wordly Wise vocabulary quiz. Instead of a paper and pencil test, Kris used the CPS clicker system. The benefits of this systems were numerous: no need to copy packets for each of the 26 students, easy analysis of question difficulty, and the summary of results could be shared with parents so they could view their child’s responses in comparison to the class responses.
My next visit was to Mike Taylor’s third grade classroom. Mike’s classroom had a very Hawaiian feel. Mike often spoke words in Hawaiian and students responded in Hawaiian as well. Mike was using his Promethean board to introduce narrative writing. The students then continued working on their Inspiration maps on their class set of MacBooks. Each of the 25 students had a MacBook to use on their own. While the kids were working, Mike calmly asked a student to “please take the chicken back outside.” I had seen a couple of chickens on the campus but I didn’t realize they freely roamed in and out of classrooms. The chickens are used for various curriculum related projects throughout the year. I noticed that in Mike’s classroom they had many character words in both English and Hawaiian displayed prominently.
I next spoke with Heather Byrne who is an elementary technology teacher. Her role sounds similar to our Engage and Co-teaching. Heather collaborates with teachers and their grade-level objectives to intertwine technology into the curriculum. Heather showed me more around the campus and then we went to lunch. While at lunch I met many other teachers including another fourth grade teacher from Michigan.
After lunch, I attended an iPad teacher workshop. Punahou has two individuals, Doug Kiang and Ted Landgraf, who serve as Curriculum and Technology Resource Teachers. They each have a class set of iPads that they work closely with teachers to develop iPad opportunities for teachers and students. Earlier in the morning, Tedd was working with a class to use iPads on a scavenger hunt which then enabled students to use a compass and latitude and longitude applications.
For the remainder of the day, I observed in the Academy which is grades 9-12. In one class the students were writing into Google docs and then peer-editing their documents. The second academy class was AP Computer Science taught by Doug Kiang. His class was working on using Xcode to develop apps. Doug’s students not only have their own personal MacBook, but they each also have an iPad. The students shared some of the many uses of their iPads in their education. Here is some of what they shared:
-Using iPads with Soundnote (or other similar applications) during class for notetaking. Soundnote has a recording feature that enables students to go back and listen to the class.
-Using an iPad as an external monitor. For example, a student may open up one document on the iPad to reference while using his MacBook so that he does not have as many windows open at once on his MacBook.
-Many students use the textbooks available for download instead of checking out and carrying a textbook around.
-In anatomy and physiology class, the students used a 3D model of the nervous system to explore its function.
Overall, my visit at Punahou was very informative. I learned many ways to incorporate interactive software into the curriculum. My visit also reinforced the impact and positive correlation between technology and student engagement in all grade levels and subject areas.
