The first steps in a plan to partly replace grade schoolers’ clunky science textbooks with Web sites, interactive CD-ROMs, and the familiar voice of broadcast journalist Bill Kurtis were unveiled Tuesday by Illinois Schools Supt. Joseph Spagnolo.
The $1.7 million pilot project, which goes under the cumbersome title of ELDLN, for Electronic Long-Distance Learning Network, will provide teachers with an array of multimedia resources, all built around installments of Kurtis’ long-running science series, “The New Explorers.”
“I think this fills a tremendous void,” Spagnolo said at a news conference. “Right now, kids don’t learn science in school, they learn about it. The only way for kids to learn scientific principles is to see and touch them.”
ELDLN complements the Illinois Learning Standards approved by the State Board of Education in July, Spagnolo said.
“Imagine kids learning about physics by watching Michael Jordan shoot a basketball,” Spagnolo said.
The virtual “touch” of computers and the other media should also help grade school teachers, according to the project’s organizers.
“Many teachers in the early levels have what I call science and math anxiety,” said Theodore Grass, president of Roosevelt University, which helped put together the curriculum. “This will help them get more comfortable with the subjects and translate them to kids.”
One of the project’s goals is to put students in direct contact with researchers through “electronic field trips.
Pilsen Community Academy, a mostly Hispanic school in Chicago, is one of the 13 schools selected to take part in the pilot project. Linda Shellberg, technology coordinator at the school, hopes ELDLN will help make her economically disadvantaged students more technology-savvy.
“This teaches them that there is a world of information out there,” she said. “Once they’ve been turned on, they’ll know where to get the information they need.”
