Teaching software flooding into New Jersey classrooms
Students in Linda Smolinski's class learn directly from a computer for part of the hour. (Photo courtesy of Asbury Park Board of Education)A computer voice guides Accoo to spell the words he hears through his headphones. Emergency. Bulldozer. Minutes. Accoo gets minutes wrong and is asked to spell that one again, several times. Later, he clicks on a proofreading button.
“You check what you have wrong out of the spelling words I just did,” explains Accoo. He is looks at the letters, “minuets”. “So then you find the correct one,” pointing his cursor to “minutes,” “and you just click on it like this.”
Twelve-year-old Amir Accoo is in the sixth grade at Asbury Park Middle School. He was so behind grade level in