THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 2, 1994 TAG: 9411010091
SECTION: ISLE OF WIGHT CITIZEN PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Education
SOURCE: BY LINDA McNATT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WINDSOR LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines
MIKE CROCKER CALLS it the cutting edge. Students call it fun. They think they are playing for a short time each day.
But what the teacher knows and his students don't is that while they think they are playing games, they are learning something every time they walk into Crocker's Technology Lab 2000 classroom at Windsor Middle School.
``Technology now can't focus on just building footstools anymore,'' Crocker said, surrounded by an array of computers and a wind tunnel, with digital images of his students staring at him from the classroom walls.
``This has grown out of industrial arts and shop classes,'' he said. ``Everything is so high tech now. This gives the kids an idea of what's out there.''
The class isn't a keyboarding class, and it's not an introduction to computers.
``It's not designed for that,'' said Crocker, a young man in his first year of teaching. ``We are here to learn how to solve problems. All skills in problem solving concentrate on real life situations. We can simulate programs on the computer, for instance, where students can fly an airplane.''
Or they can design a manufacturing plant, produce a newsletter with a desk top publishing program, improve their communications skills or build complex mechanisms using plastic gears and pulleys.
``We've learned that to be able to create something, to invent something, you have to be able to solve problems,'' he said. ``We provide an activity for the students where they have to be able to do that.''
It's not a traditional class, and it's not a typical classroom. Crocker, a Windsor native who graduated from Isle of Wight Academy in 1987, doesn't lecture. And he doesn't hand out mimeographed worksheets for students to complete.
``It is something different every day,'' he said. ``I try to pair students off, with one pair of students working on a single activity. I get a chance to run around from place to place to answer questions, to push students in a different direction.''
Every middle school student at Windsor will take a short Technology Lab 2000 course during the sixth, seventh and eighth grades. Sixth-graders, for example, spend nine weeks in Crocker's class just as they spend nine weeks in art and music.
Seventh- and eighth-graders get an 18-week course in technology. For some students, Crocker said, it could pave the way for them to go on to P.D. Pruden Vocational Technical School. He said he hopes the high school soon will be able to offer technology to those students who want to learn more about technology but don't want to follow the vocational route.
Meanwhile, he said, the middle school may soon be offering an adult technology course.
``This teaches the students what's out there, what's available, what can be done with computers,'' Crocker said. ``We've had lots of parents and other people who have asked why we don't do this for adults. And I think that possibility is in the works right now.''
Unlike what the name of the course indicates, Crocker said he is actually teaching what is available in computer technology today, not what may be available in the next decade. From the computer programs to the equipment, he said, everything in the spacious classroom, divided into work stations with designations like ``aero test,'' ``plant,'' ``test,'' ``publish,'' ``design'' and ``plant layout,'' is available and being used in today's world.
In tomorrow's world, it will all be a necessity to survive, Crocker said.
``This is all going on in the world today,'' he said. ``These are skills nearly everybody is going to need in the future.''
All of it, he said, is fascinating, and the reactions of his students to the new technology that many of them aren't even aware of is just as fascinating. In fact, the teacher who set out to be an architect is learning right along with his students.
One thing he's learned is that he made the right decision when he decided after two years at Virginia Tech to change courses and go into teaching.
``I haven't been disappointed in my decision,'' Crocker said, grinning. ``Some days are good. Some days are bad. But I'm not sorry I chose teaching. It's a challenge. And technology teachers are really in demand. If I wanted to go to Florida, for example, I'd probably get five job offers.''
But for right now, Crocker is content to stay close to home, teaching in the small town where he grew up. He realized how much he missed Windsor, he said, after just two years of being away at school.
When he decided to teach, he visited Old Dominion University on spring break, decided to enroll there, and for three years he worked full time at Newport News Shipbuilding while he also went to school.
He got his degree in Technology Education from ODU last May and started teaching at Windsor Middle School in September.
And there's something else the young teacher has learned.
``Today's students don't like to read; they don't like to be lectured to,'' Crocker said. ``We have to make all of this as entertaining as we possibly can to keep their attention.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by MICHAEL KESTNER
Mike Crocker teaches Technology Lab 2000 at Windsor Middle School.
The class, he says, teaches students to solve problems.
by CNB