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>>Craig: James is ready to take his project
out to Mrs. Wright's class and try it out.
>>Narrator: This class at Washington Middle School in Olympia, Washington,
is like hundreds of others across the country,
where teachers impart vital new technology skills to their students.
>>Teacher: Creative or...
>>Narrator: But in this Generation Y class,
the seventh-graders are doing the teaching...
>>Student: That font is good for the titles, because it's big.
It's big enough that you can distinguish the letters,
but when it gets to...
>>Narrator: ...and the teachers are learning.
>>Teacher: You see anything you would change?
>>Student: Yeah.
There's no home link here.
I noticed that on your previous page like you have on here --
and that's really good, but some browsers don't have Back buttons,
so you have to retype the URL, which is really annoying.
>>Narrator: Begun in 1996,
the Generation Y program pairs tech-savvy grade-schoolers
with tech-challenged teachers
to help them integrate new technology into their lesson plans.
>>Teacher: Right now what we have is a couple Web sites
for research purposes, but that's about it,
so what kinds of suggestions do you think you might have as far
as where to infuse technology?
>>Student: Well, for a presentation about how we did it
in PowerPoint would be a good one, because it's...
>>Narrator: Now operating in over 40 states,
this elegantly simple concept was the brainchild
of Olympia School District's technology coordinator,
Dennis Harper.
>>Dennis: I was a former university college of education trainer
of pre-service teachers, and typically a lot
of the instruction they get are from professors who haven't been
in a classroom in 20 years.
There's not a teacher in the United States that actually went
to K-12 schools when the World Wide Web was in existence,
so teachers don't realize the resources.
They don't realize how sharp these kids are.
They don't realize that for the first time
in history now we have students knowing more than their teachers
about something that's really central and important to society.
>>Student: And Web pages are just endless possibilities.
>>Teacher: What age do you recommend that, the Web pages?
>>Student: Web pages?
Well, we got into it a little bit in fifth grade,
but you basically don't really do very much with it
until middle school and up.
You can use PowerPoint with younger age groups and keep it simple,
or you can use it with older age groups and make it a little fancier.
>>Heather: It's been really helpful for me to get a student's perspective
on how to infuse technology in my classroom.
I'm actually learning from these girls here about where
to put technology, how it's used and what's in the classrooms right now.
It aligns well with my teaching philosophy in that I need
to teach what they need to know, and if they need to learn something,
we need to move in that direction, and I don't know unless I'm talking
to them and working with them.
>>Teacher: So what we have is Sara and Hanako are suddenly going to turn
into Ms. Conrad, the partner teacher, and Sara is meeting
with her for the first time.
Listen carefully for what...
>>Narrator: Gen. Y students also practice communication skills
and teaching methods so they can better assist pre-service teachers
with lesson planning.
>>Student: Soundtrack and transitions.
>>Teacher: What's a transition?
>>Student: Transitions are you can fade in and fade out
and just like the dials...
>>Narrator: Younger Gen. Y kids
like these fourth-graders help their classroom teachers learn new skills
like video editing.
>>Teacher: Are there sound effects that you could use?
>>Student: Yeah.
We have to go into a CD, and then you export it to iMovie
and you can use it for the school news.
>>Dennis: The overwhelming majority, more than 98 percent of the thousands
of teaches that have been involved
with this program have said they prefer learning from students
than learning from adults.
Teachers go into teaching because they like to work with kids,
and that's what makes this model successful.
>>Teacher: I want to see you guys in it.
Ready?
>>Narrator: Even though they have to get up early
to attend Gen. Y class before school each day, these kids return
to the program year after year, eager to teach and learn.
>>Student: ...or if you want to cut it smaller,
this will make it smaller.
>>Teacher: Crop it.
>>DeAnne: It's absolutely joyful to work with these kids.
The more power you give them, the more empowered they become.
They take responsibility for their own learning.
They get very excited about having authentic, purposeful reason to be
at school and authentic ways of helping their teachers.
They take charge of their learning and it carries
across into all of the disciplines.
They just really feel that it's important for them to be here,
that they are the people who matter in the school.
>>Student: Headings go with the graphics.
>>Craig: So what I want you to watch for as James shows his first two
or three slides is: What do you think are the things...
>>Narrator: Gen. Y instructors like Craig Costello see more
than a win-win proposition at work.
They see schools being transformed by the process
of kids training their teachers.
>>Craig: We've got teachers who are interested in education
because they're about to become teachers, students who are interested
in the educational process because they've just had to teach a lesson
for the first time and realized suddenly how difficult it is,
and experienced teachers who realize they can't figure
out the technology unless they get some help from somebody,
so when we meet in that common area, suddenly we've got something to talk
about together, and the whole culture
of our school has changed in an easy way.
It hasn't been teachers feeling like, "I've got to be dragged and pulled
into this technology," kind of thing.
They've got their students working with them over time on a project,
and then suddenly they have the skills, and it was kind
of a painless way of getting the skills.
>>Teacher: Then what happens?
>>Teacher: This looks pretty easy.
Is it ever this easy?
>>Narrator: For more information on what works
in public education, go to edutopia.org.