Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24Janet Claussen has nothing against text- books. “I love textbooks. I have helped contribute to textbooks. I’m always en- couraging my department members to use textbooks,” she says. But the theology department chair and 18-year teaching veteran at Marist High School in Atlanta sees an important place for eLearning in her curriculum and classrooms as well. Like many veteran teachers, she has entered the world of eLearning gradually but with steadily increasing enthusiasm. First came computers. “When we first brought the laptops” into the classroom, “I don’t think many people changed their teaching style that much,” she said. “We weren’t quite sure what to do with them. And there were very few—in fact, there are still very few—textbooks online, e-textbooks.” Although students continued to lug around backpacks weighed down with textbooks, at least now they could also tap into online content, as well as compose and deliver WITH JANET CLAUSSEN “We have Understanding Catholi- cism” as one of our new eLearning offerings, Vitek said, which can answer that need. “Because it’s an eLearning course it provides tremendous adaptability to be offered online as a summer ‘bridge course’ or as a blended-learning first semester course. We can help solve some very real chal- lenges schools are facing with these eLearning courses.” As feedback comes in, Vitek said SMP hopes to be able to cus- tomize products to suit individ- ual needs. “That’s an immediate interest—an immediate possibility.” TRUE TO THE LASALLIAN MISSION How does eLearning corre- spond with the teaching tradi- tion and mission of the Chris- tian Brothers of de La Salle? Vitek cited an observation from Brother Gerard Rummery, FSC, a contemporary scholar of St. John Baptist de La Salle. “Br. Rum- mery,” said Vitek, described “a distinguishing characteristic of the Lasallian charism—really all Christian education—that it is driven by following the needs of students.” Reaching young peo- ple through mobile technology and leveraging the strengths of eLearning is just that, Vitek said, “following the needs of students.” “We’ve been learning—and Allen Interactions (a Minneapolis/St. Paul-based company that builds custom learning solutions and instructional products) helped us early on—that interactions must not be busy work, not just for entertainment. They must be intentional. Every interaction must be purposeful, intentional, and have a learning outcome tied to it. Allen Interactions cautioned us against creating” eLearning that “is not active, not discovery learning, so we have worked very purposefully in that,” Vitek notes. “It’s really hard work to design a good eLearning course,” Vitek said. “We must design an interaction that achieves desired learning out- comes. It can’t be a meaningless task. And when a young person encounters an eLearning course of this type, well, it’s transformational.” As one young person at a Cath- olic school in Atlanta who is using SMP’s eLearning course, Understanding Catholicism, re- marked to Vitek when he was visiting the classroom, “I wish every course I had was like this.” “That’s all I needed to hear,” Vitek said, “to confirm for me that we are on the path of something of real help, real value for our Catholic school religion teachers and their students.” // Q A & SPARK // SMP.ORG/ELEARNING // 9 8 // SMP.ORG/ELEARNING // SPARK