CAPE ELIZABETH – Karen Abbott, a first-grade teacher at Pond Cove Elementary School in Cape Elizabeth, has started to use an iPod to help with reading literacy.

Abbott uses the device, she said, to record a student’s reading fluency and pronunciation and can, if needed, send the recording to the school’s speech pathologist to help students with speech impediments.

“I am a learner when it comes to technology. I learn something new every week,” Abbott said.

For her work in integrating technology into the classroom, Abbott, who has been teaching in the Cape Elizabeth school system for 13 years, was recently named the Technology Educator of the Year by the Association of Computer Technology Educators of Maine.

“We are pleased to have Karen here,” said Gary Lanoie, technology coordinator for the Cape Elizabeth School Department. “We are pleased to have her recognized on the state level.”

For the past three years, Abbott has been using a Smart Board, an interactive digital whiteboard, in her classroom and helping her colleagues embrace it in their classrooms as well.

“You get some teachers, like Karen, who are very excited about it, find uses for it and shares that with other teachers,” Lanoie said.

Lanoie said Abbott and fourth-grade teacher Erik Nielson have been proactive in offering workshops on Smart Board and other technology over the summer months or after school.

“She is more than willing to go to another teacher’s classroom and say ‘This is how I am using technology,'” Lanoie said of Abbott.

Abbott said the teacher of the year honor will help her continue to explore technology in education. She said she and Lanoie are going to discuss how she can best spend the $1,000 prize on technology in the classroom.

“Being the ACTEM teacher of the year has given me the opportunity to push forward and do more,” Abbott said. “I have some money now that I can spend in the classroom.”

Every morning, Abbott uses the Smart Board to offer the morning message of the day, as well as throughout the day for a number of learning activities.

“People ask me all the time why I need all this technology,” Abbott said. “I have a whiteboard. I have books and materials. But technology is the way children are going so if we don’t put them where they need to be then I am not doing my job. They need to be able to use these tools.”

Technology as tool

However, technology, in Abbott’s opinion, should be thought of as simply another tool for instruction.

“I try to tie it into as much of the curriculum as possible, but it is a tool. It is not a teacher, but a tool to use,” Abbott said.

“I hope, we, as teachers, keep in mind it is all about the children and this is just another tool we can use to teach them,” she added.

Lanoie said the technology Abbott and other teachers offer helps students become more engaged in what they are learning.

“It helps the kids get engaged in learning. Kids at this age like to feel and touch what they are learning about, whether they are doing math, or science or reading,” Lanoie said. “It draws them in and motivates them.”

The technology, Lanoie said, has not changed Abbott’s teaching, but has changed they way it is presented to the students.

“The center of what she is doing is the same as what she has always done,” he said. “She is just using technology to do it now.”

The Smart Board is but one piece of technology Abbott uses in her classroom to enhance curriculum. Students also have the opportunity, from time to time, to use a small Flip camera to take pictures or videos of what they are learning about.

“You can hear them talking and engaging with each other. It is incredible. I am always impressed with what I hear,” she said.

She also uses the camera to place pictures and videos on her website so parents can keep track of what their children are doing in school. Her website, which can be accessed through the Pond Cove website, also includes a monthly newsletter and other useful links for parents.

She said she is going to use a online comic book program called Comic Life to create an online storyboard that ties in with the school’s song, “We Take Care of Each Other,” in which students will have to place appropriate captions to pictures of themselves practicing good behaviors.

Doing it right

With technology the wave of the future in the classroom, Lanoie said how much technology students get exposed to both in and out of the classroom should be a concern for parents.

“I think it is the way education is going,” he said. “I am sure there are some parents that are concerned about too much exposure for their child.”

“Parents need to be concerned about that, but there are great resources out there to deal with that concern,” he continued, adding the Cape Elizabeth School Department’s technology website has many helpful resources for parents.

Pond Cove Principal Tom Eisenmeier said technology isn’t just being used to teach students, but to help teachers do a better job communicating with parents. An example of this, he said, is the digital progress reports the school began sending out five years ago.

It has also helped in professional development for teachers and staff in the district, Eisenmeier said.

Part of the problem with keeping up with technology in the classrooms is the cost of doing so, Eisenmeier said. Because of this sometimes a “digital divide” gets created separating schools that can afford technology with those that cannot.

“Technology is hard to finance,” he said, “but because of contributions we have been able to keep up.

Lanoie said much of the funding for technology throughout the district comes not from tax dollars in the school budget, but rather from donations from the Cape Elizabeth Education Foundation and the Pond Cove Parents Association.

The amount of technology in the classrooms on an elementary school level has only continued to grow in recent years.

“Pond Cove, two or three years back was my weakest building for technology,” Lanoie said. “But since then, this building has taken great strides toward technology, thanks to parents and the CEEF.”

Funding for technology in the schools has also come from state funding sources. Lanoie said for the past few years, Cape Elizabeth has participated in the statewide One to One program, in which every seventh- and eighth-grade student is provided with a laptop. The laptops, which come loaded with the educational materials the students need, are rented out to students to bring home and use in the classroom for the school year.

Pond Cove does not participate in the program, but does have a rolling cart of laptops available for teachers to use, much like in the high school, where each academic department has a cart of 22 laptop computers to use.

Since Abbott began teaching more than a decade ago, technology has come a long way in becoming commonplace in the classroom.

When she started, she said, she had a “monster” of a computer, which students could only use sporadically and which was difficult to incorporate into classroom teaching.

“It has changed so much. I think technology has pushed us forward,” she said.

Technology in the classroom, Lanoie said, will become more and more commonplace.

“More and more of the resources for the classroom, I think, will be able to be delivered by technology,” he said. “Instead of having the students carry these big, heavy backpacks, we can give them something that has their textbooks on it and where they can explore the Internet and do their writing and research.”

Karen Abbott, the state’s technology teacher of the year helps first-grade student Stephanie te Boekhorst use the Smart Board technology at Pond Cove Elementary School in Cape Elizabeth. (Courtesy photo)