FACES OF THE BCIU
Sue Calvin - SUPERVISOR, DISTANCE LEARNING
“I help students expand their view of the world outside their school’s front door”
Sue Calvin has taken Berks County’s public school students to Hawaii, outer space, and on tours of college campuses.
Without ever leaving their school.
As supervisor for distance learning at the BCIU, Sue works with the county’s school districts to integrate distance learning tools and programs into their curriculum, aligned with PA educational standards.
“With the quality audio and video capability we have today via the Wide Area Network (WAN) and the high-speed network that connects all intermediate units and school districts to one another, PAIUNet, it’s almost as if you’re in the same room with the person on the other side of the camera,” Sue says. “And the distance learning programs available out there are incredible.”
For example, Sue has seen teachers receive valuable information as they speak with an educational specialist at the National Archives via videoconference. She and her colleagues at the BCIU have provided Berks County students the opportunity to have a real-time discussion about the stars and galaxies with an astronomer via a link to the Gemini Observatory control rooms in Hawaii and Chile.
“These programs allow students and teachers to get exposure to things they normally wouldn’t,” Sue says. “How else could they have the undivided attention of a professional astronomer in a world-class observatory?”
Sue came to the BCIU after years as a teacher, gifted student coordinator, and network administrator at LaSalle Academy in Shillington. She possesses a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from The State University of New York at Potsdam, and a master’s degree in classroom technology from Wilkes University. She currently is working toward a Ph.D. in computing technology in education from Nova Southeastern University in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, a program that is, not surprisingly, predominately distance-based and online.
But her greatest love is bringing to students and teachers the incredible educational opportunities distance learning programs offer, especially those involving videoconferencing. In fact, Sue has created several videoconferencing events that really open young people up to a variety of opinions and beliefs sometimes vastly different from their own.
Sue has coordinated an “Ethics for Students in a Digital World” videoconference workshop for middle school students in which students from several Berks County school districts got together virtually to present vignettes about and discuss issues concerning the use of technology in their day-to-day lives.
“Instead of just talking about the issues, students put on short skits about different scenarios involving technology,” Sue says. “They perform them on camera and then they ask the other students watching via the videoconference three questions about whether what happened in the skits was ethical, wrong, or somewhere in between.
“The discussions become very lively,” Sue continues. “The presentations really get the students thinking and open their minds to some of the ‘hidden’ issues regarding technology use.”
It’s this exposure to a variety of opinions and worldviews that makes videoconferencing and distance-learning technology so valuable, Sue says.
“So many of these young people will go on to work in other countries or for international companies. Distance learning can give them exposure to those cultures. It connects students around the country and around the globe.”