"To exclude technology and telecommunications
from our students' experiences in school
is to leave them illiterate and unprepared for their future."
-- Soo Boo Tan, Kaimuki High School

EDUCATOR CLOSEUP

Just one computer

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It took just one computer to get Soo Boo Tan hooked on leveraging technology in the classroom.

She has been teaching science at Kaimuki High School since 1990. She gained much of her technology background through Department of Education-sponsored courses, which she began taking in 1995.

But her passion for technology in the classroom began when she had a real, live box in her room.

"I really only got started when I got my first computer in the classroom," Tan says. "It was the opportunity to use it as a teaching tool in the classroom that motivated me, and in turn I learned a lot about technology just because of the availability of that one computer in my room."

Now she has a program designed to help other educators get the most out of just one computer in their classrooms. She has been spreading the word through a presentation called "The One-Computer Classroom." She has shared it at several conferences including the National Educational Computing Conference, which was held in Seattle in the summer of 1997.

As a biology teacher, Tan uses technology to bring her students closer to the subject matter.

"I have found that using your computer to teach not only simplifies tasks (less paper is wasted), but it engages students," Tan says. "They acquire computer literacy along the way as well.

"I would like to see students in all subject areas and levels acquire computer and Internet skills and use them in their learning, thinking and living. Today's students need to be technologically literate to get ahead in the workplace of tomorrow. Learning computer skills is one thing; thinking and living computer skills is another. The latter is the world our students will enter into when they leave school. To exclude technology and telecommunications from our students' experiences in school is to leave them illiterate and unprepared for their future."