Back in the pandemic days, more than one Monongalia County educator had to be gently talked into using technology – really using technology – for remote classroom instruction, since virtually every public school in the state was shuttered.
Soothing words of encouragement, and all that.
Metaphorical (and Metaverse) handholding and ever-so-slight nudges into the blinking, beeping, science fiction-like maw.
“Well, more than a few of them did start out being intimidated,” Chris Urban said with a chuckle.
“But you should have seen them in June.”
Urban, who directs technology services for Mon’s district, was referring to her annual “Chromebook Camp,” version 2023, which was held last month.
That’s her summertime tech-fest for the people in front of the classroom wishing to get better acclimated to the latest eye-popping applications out there, via the Chromebook laptop computers the district issues to teachers and students.
Last month, Mon teachers became Mon students in that arena.
And they all got gold stars for computer courage and enthusiasm, said Urban, who was originally programmed for her career in education to be a teacher.
Urban worked 75 of them through the rudiments of 3-D printing and Cricut (sounds like, “cricket”) – the computer application-aided cutting machine that enables the creation of intricate designs and stencils, which can then be affixed to any number of surfaces and materials.
“They really enjoyed it,” Urban said. “Especially the 3-D printing.”
With that technology in particular, one history teacher talked about the rendering of Civil War battlefields, giving a visual, topographical sense of what soldiers on both sides were experiencing.
Another educator whose subject is biology considered the possibilities of a large-scale model of the human cell, created and printed three-dimensionally, so her students could regard the body’s elemental engine from all facets.
English teachers were already outlining lesson plans where their students could conjure what they think a character in a book might look like – one in the author’s imagination and theirs, too, who escaped the Hollywood treatment of casting for a movie adaptation.
“There’s a lot they can do,” the technology director said.
“It’s going to benefit their students and it’s really going to benefit them as teachers. They’re going to be busy.”
In the meantime, she and her team are busily repairing the Chromebooks that were turned in by graduating seniors at the end of the school year.
With the aid of levy dollars, the district began issuing the portable computers around eight years ago – with all the predicable wear and tear expected, from both students and teachers.
You spilled an entire mocha caramel frappe – large – on yours, at the kitchen table, when your chirping cell phone jolted you out of your term paper reverie.
Or, your rambunctious toddler batted the device off the bed and onto the hardwood floor, whereby your equally rambunctious puppy … well, never mind.
Sprung lids, chipped monitors, stuck keys and any number of user-error maladies.
Then there was the one kid, Urban said.
She still marvels at that one kid.
That’s because he’s now officially a legend in the Mon Schools tech-annals of, “You aren’t gonna believe this one.”
Hit “send,” she said.
An open-and-shut case, clearly and definitively.
“His mom called and said his pet goat ate the battery charger for his Chromebook,” Urban said.
“Made a meal of it. You can’t top that.”
TWEET@DominionPostWV
