Case Study You are a student teacher at Greater Maryland Middle School. Today you are observing Mrs. Jones teaching her social studies class in the computer lab. Her first period is her planning period. She has asked you to assist her with setting up the lab for her lesson plan. She is installing the school's only copy of an atlas software program for a single user license on the 22 computers in the lab. She explains that her lesson will require students to download information about the country that they have been assigned from the atlas program and to also search the Internet for more information for a PowerPoint presentation. Mrs. Jones encourages students to freely use any information from the Internet for their presentation.
At the beginning of each class, the students enter and sit where they choose, occasionally arguing over seats. For the four classes with more than 22 students, Mrs. Jones pairs a boy and a girl, assigning the boy to operate the computer and the girl to take notes. Mrs. Jones starts the class by sharing a model of a final product, a PowerPoint presentation. Without guidance, she encourages the students to freely copy any graphics and text from the Internet to brighten up their slides. She explains that they will have one day in the computer lab to complete the assignment and that, if they do not finish in class, they must complete the work at home within two days. She directs them to use the atlas software and to search the web for sites about the country assigned to them. At the completion of class, she gives them time to save their work to the class folder on the local area network and reminds them not to access other folders.
During the first class period with students, a few students become distracted with the computer in the first row where Mrs. Jones had been working on her gradebook program at the end of her planning period. They begin reciting aloud the classmates' scores that are still visible on the monitor. She closes the program and puts the students back on task. Several students sitting by the windows complain that they cannot read their monitors due to glare.
During the next class, Period 3, several students rush in and sit toward the back of the lab while the teacher does hall duty. As the other students enter the class, they become interested in the stifled giggles from the back row. The bell rings and the teacher enters the room approaching the group of students huddled in the back around a monitor. She disperses the group and finds the monitor displaying a commercial web site for movie videos. She proceeds as she did with the previous class. When the bell rings at the end of class, several students rush out without properly logging out and the backpack of one gets hooked to a monitor cable. Luckily, a student nearby catches the monitor before it falls.
Period 4 begins more smoothly than the last, except for a brief delay to locate a workstation for a wheelchair-bound student. One student has already started the assignment at home and has brought his work on disk. He opens the file and continues his work.
Several minutes into the 5th period, the guidance counselor brings a student new to the school and introduces her to Mrs. Jones. The counselor explains that her mother is downstairs completing the entrance paperwork. Mrs. Jones briefly describes the assignment and seats the new girl next to another student accessing the Internet.
The day concludes with a smooth opening to period 6; however, 15 minutes into the class, the power to the lab server goes out. Mrs. Jones calms the excited students and asks them to be patient, assuming the power will be on within a few minutes. The principal makes an announcement that a local power surge affected the server and the lab computers will be down for the remainder of the day. Since there are 35 minutes left until dismissal, he encourages teachers to continue their lessons. Mrs. Jones mentions to you that she really had nothing else planned and she does not want to begin the next day's lesson, which would put the classes out of sync with each other. She tells the students they will have to complete the project on their own and allows them to talk quietly until the dismissal bell rings. After the final bell, Mrs. Jones dismisses the students and tells you to reflect on the day.
Questions for students to answer.