“Silent Retreat” Challenges ASL Students, by Dale Arling Ericson, SOCRATES

Leave your voice at the door!” said the instructions on the sign by the Northport conference room door, North Mankato. From that point on, for the next three hours, voice would not be used to communicate by over 40 American Sign Language (ASL) students and their guests.

The high school students gathered December 3, to learn how to survive the next three hours by using the newly acquired skills they had learned in their distance learning ASL classes. It was amazing how well they communicated when placed into a non-speaking environment.

Crista Browne-Krosch, SOCRATES ASL instructor, set up the Silent Retreat to bring together her distance learning students to experience communicating in a deaf environment and to learn more about the deaf community. Special guests for the day were Pam Guerrero and Tracy Koster, both from the Southwest Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services Division in Mankato.

Instructions for the day were presented entirely in ASL by Ms. Browne-Krosch, and then the activities began.

In one event, name tags of various famous people were placed on students’ backs, and each student had to figure out whose name was on his or her back by gathering information via sign from other students.

Board games and card games were also played in silence. All present appeared to understand each other and to enjoy the games. Laughter was subdued but not prohibited.

Following a pizza lunch, storytime was presented by Ms. Koster, who began by signing familiar stories and then migrated to more unfamiliar stories. At the end of storytime, Tracy, who is deaf, answered questions from the audience and made students aware of the deaf culture, dealing with subjects such as sign language in other countries, cochlear implants, and her personal experiences.

From her classroom at Northport, Ms. Browne-Krosch teaches three sections of American Sign Language via interactive television (ITV) to students located at the high schools of Granada-Huntley, Le Sueur, Montgomery, Nicollet, and St. Clair.

Offering certified courses to every secondary student in the south central region of Minnesota is sometimes a challenge. Scheduling difficulties or simply available courses in the home district may not meet the needs of the student. SOCRATES has managed an interactive television network that often combines students from different districts. But what of the individual student who needs a credit in a core subject for graduation or acceptance in a post-secondary program?

Many districts in Minnesota and throughout the country have turned to online learning made possible with the instant communication via the Internet. The Minnesota Department of Education lists nine local school districts or consortiums offering online education. SOCRATES initiated online courses in English, science and math in three districts to five students in the 2004-05 school year. Class.com was chosen as the curriculum provider because of its long term reputation and association with TIES in the metro area. TIES and in turn SOCRATES provided training to local teacher/facilitators to work with the students.

Planning for the next school year, SOCRATES has investigated two other curriculum providers. Class.com has more than 36 courses and is an experienced provider having grown from a research project at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln started in 1996. Florida Virtual High School (www.flvs.net) offers more than 75 courses either facilitated or locally managed. NorthernStarOnline (www.northernstaronline.org) is a recent consortium of school districts in the western metro region of Minneapolis centered on their Intermediate District 287. They currently offer 17 courses from member districts, some of which have had a rich history of offering online courses locally. SOCRATES is investigating these providers in an effort to expand course offerings to students in our region.

A key factor in any course and particularly online courses is a good teacher trained in facilitating and working with students in a new environment. A recent survey by Dale Carrison found five teachers in our region interested in facilitating online courses. These teachers represented English, math, life sciences and chemistry. State law requires that the facilitator be licensed in Minnesota in the subject area. A teacher licensed in the physical sciences is also needed.

Experience in this field finds that a teacher that can maintain a close personal contact with the student on a weekly if not daily basis assures better success for the student. Successful students are also independent learners and self motivated. Online education is not for everyone but it does answer a need for many of our students.

A meeting of a new E-Learning Steering Committee to discuss the future of online learning in the region is scheduled for Wednesday, February 23rd at 9 a.m. at Northport. Interested administrators, teachers and tech coordinators are encouraged to attend.

For additional information on our efforts contact SOCRATES Director, Dale Carrison at dcarrison@projectsocrates.org. To discuss working with your teachers in online learning, contact electronic curriculum coordinator Dave Henning at dhenning@projectsocrates.org or 507-995-0165.