Two teachers from the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls in South Africa spent their first day in the United States at a Sacramento-area high school.
Carolyn Bercovich and Inge Thakor Daya appeared a little jet-lagged but in good spirits when they arrived Aug. 15 at Del Oro High School in Loomis.
"We've been traveling for 37 hours, so we had a very long ride," Bercovich said as she followed a chemistry teacher to Room 405.
There, they watched students use the same kind of hand-held, battery-operated computers purchased for Winfrey's academy. The Xplorer GLX graphing data-loggers allow students to measure and graph environmental data, such as temperature, humidity and gas molecule levels.
Bercovich and Daya said they have been fiddling with the high-tech device for the past year, unsure of how it works.
"Our aim is to take this to the younger girls and help make the abstract a little more understandable," Daya said, explaining that a class of 20 seventh-graders in Winfrey's all-girl academy will work in pairs with the equipment.
The teachers' journey from South Africa to Loomis was sparked by a weeklong training offered by the data-logger makers, Roseville-based PASCO Scientific. The company reports an increase in international sales of educational technology – attributing sales to more developing countries seeking to improve scientific literacy and the economy.
Winfrey's technology-driven school purchased 30 data-loggers when it opened in the small village of Henley-on-Klip in January 2007. The $40 million campus is a collection 28 buildings stretched over 52 acres, about 24 miles south of Johannesburg, South Africa's largest city.
The Oprah Leadership Academy's Web site describes modern dormitories along the "Street of Living." Near residences are 21 state-of-the-art classrooms, each equipped with interactive SMART Boards, and six labs for art, science, computer and design technology.
All classrooms open to an outdoor study area. Students have regular access to a larger computer lab, a 10,000-volume library, a theater seating more than 600, music practice rooms, an outdoor amphitheater, sports fields, a gymnasium and a wellness center.
The facilities are a big change for many of the 228 students selected to attend. Some students had no prior computer experience or their only exposure to technology was a cell phone, Bercovich said.
Some hailed from schools where daily lessons are taught under a tree.
When asked how students have adapted to such huge changes, Bercovich said, children are the same everywhere – "children are resilient and willing to learn."
"Our goal as a school is to equip the students with technology and to encourage independent thinking and analyzation of data, in a more independent manner than some of the more traditional teaching methods," Bercovich said
The academy's mission is to provide a rigorous yet supportive educational environment for academically talented girls, who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, according to the academy's Web site.
The data-loggers represent another step toward that mission.
Bercovich and Daya watched from the sidelines as a new class of Del Oro chemistry students used the equipment for the first time.
"I like hands-on stuff. It's easier," said 11th-grader Carlee Spangler, as she calculated the percentage of oxygen trapped inside the data-loggers' test tube.
Bill Kurnett, Del Oro's chemistry teacher, said the school's standardized test scores for chemistry rose 15 percent last year after his students used the new technology.
But even with Winfrey's money to buy educational technology, it's no use without teacher training, he said.
Kurnett, a 16-year veteran teacher, took a two-year hiatus to work for PASCO.
"It's very different from how we were taught in school because all of this technology didn't exist back then," Kurnett said.
Call The Bee's Lakiesha McGhee at (916) 773-7630.
