Students not going up to the board

BARSTOW — Students in Jennifer Johnson’s learning lab do not have to wait for a
returned paper with marks in red pen to see how they did on their long division assignments. They know instantly, with the click of the button.
Johnson, who teaches at Thomson Elementary School, is one of a handful of teachers using a digital chalkboard to teach students from all grades math, language arts and other subjects. With lessons flashing up on a big screen at the front of the class and students interacting with it through small remote controls or the pad itself, the students and teachers learn on a communal computer.
“It really obviously keeps them paying attention,” Johnson said. “Any avenue we can take to reach them, let’s take it.”
The Interwrite Pad is a legal-pad-sized tablet and stylus that allows Johnson to stand anywhere in the classroom and write on the front board. Teachers can download lesson plans formatted for the technology from the Internet or develop their own and load the plans into a slide show program on the computer.
For last Thursday’s fourth grade lesson in geometry, Johnson decided to create her own lesson to teach the students shapes. Using a digital camera, Johnson took photos of triangles, squares, pentagons and hexagons all over Thomson’s campus and incorporated them into her teaching. The students, most of whom are at risk or have special education needs, recognize the familiar sights and learn faster, Johnson said.
Another advantage, Johnson said, is knowing right away which students grasp the lesson. At the end of the lesson on shapes, Johnson flashed a series of questions about geometry taken straight from the state standards test. Students answered the multiple choice questions about polygons by selecting the correct answer on a remote control. The answers are sent to Johnson who can see a graph showing how many students got the answer right and wrong.
“I like it that tells me right away what kids have the concept,” Johnson said. “I don’t have to wait to go home and correct the papers ... I see progress here.”
The progress paid off. When Johnson’s students recently took a geometry end-of-chapter test in their regular classroom, all of the students who learned using the Interwrite system passed.
The success of the Interwrite system, in only its second year at Thomson, has caused other teachers to embrace the technology. Johnson said other teachers have asked her to teach lessons to other classes. Johnson hopes once teachers become comfortable with writing on the pad and organizing lessons for the system that all teachers will start using the technology.
The Barstow Unified School District is banking on that fact that most teachers at Thomson will start using the Interwrite system as well. Thomson’s principal, Theresa Gonzales, said that the school has seven systems on campus right now and next year every teacher will have an Interwrite pad. Thomson school was the first in the district to try out the new technology, but Mickey Hirsch, director of instructional support for the district, said that word spread to other schools. She said units have been purchased for Barstow High School, Barstow Intermediate School and other elementary schools.
“More and more schools are jumping on board and realizing this is the direction we need to go,” she said.
The systems cost $3,000 a piece, Hirsch said, and are paid for out of categorical funding from the state and federal government used to increase the achievement of specific groups of students.
Students using the Interwrite system credited it with helping them learn some of math’s most difficult operations. Vincent Reaves, 10, said that at first it was difficult to get used to writing with the system’s stylus and learning how to work the remotes but now considers
himself an expert. He said Interwrite made learning long division and multiplication fun. Leonel Maya, 10, also said he likes using the system in class. Lakessha Ford, 10, said the pad opens the classroom up and her and her classmates all learn together.
“I like seeing people’s mistakes,” she said. “And you can learn from them.”
During the lesson, Lakessha was not shy about announcing where she made mistakes and what she had forgotten about shapes. Johnson said the technology relaxes the students so they feel more comfortable bringing up areas they are not clear on. She said she in those moment she can immediately reteach until the whole class understands.

What’s a fir tree?
There aren’t many fir trees in Barstow, but Jennifer Johnson’s class knows what one is.
While reading a book one day in class, one of the characters ran behind a fir tree to hide. Johnson asked her class if a fir tree was a good tree to hide behind, and many students could not answer because they didn’t know if a fir tree was like a small bush or like a Joshua tree or like an oak tree.
'So we went online real quick with the Interwrite pad and looked at all kinds of pictures of trees,' she said.