For the past three weeks I have been observing Father Michael Brunovsky’s 4th Period 11th grade AP U.S. History class at Benedictine High School in Cleveland. The students are quite engaged in the material, and Father Michael uses several different media to capture and hold student interest during the class. In addition, students not only are rather savvy with their personal IPhones and IPads, but they readily access class material on the class web portal, as well as through an AP U.S. History website (ap.GilderLehrman.org) that helps students to prepare for the upcoming AP exams, which will take place in May of this year for these students. Today, the AP U.S. History exam is a three to four hour written examination, consisting of multiple choice questions and essays, whereas I can remember a much more simple multiple choice AP U.S. History exam I took in the early 1980s. Thus, Father Michael works not only on content but on how students need to present such content in a coherent fashion in well-formed essays.

The classroom I am observing seems more similar to classrooms I attended during high school in the 1970s and 1980s than some of the newer examples I am encountering during my education studies at John Carroll University. The desks are traditional and stationary, not conducive to group work. However, they are arranged in a semi-circle so that all students are close to the front of the class. Father Michael lectures during class, but uses a variety of technology and media, such as a Smartboard for PowerPoint slides, YouTube videos, DVDs, as well as music and spoken language CDs and other media to provide variety in presentation formats. His lectures involve much input from students, ample time for questions and answers, and some discussion and debate among students about the topics for the day. However, Father Michael frequently has to bring students back to the main topic when some of their side conversations veer into debates and arguments about contemporary politics, high school sports rivalries, teenage romance gossip, and other subjects not germane to U.S. History.

All students at Benedictine High School have laptop computers courtesy of the school, which they can take home at night for homework assignments. The young men in Father Michael’s class keep their computers open throughout class to follow along with his PowerPoint slides, which he publishes on the class web portal. Students either take notes on their laptops or in paper notebooks, depending upon their personal preference. Father Michael posts other relevant class documents on this portal for student reading outside of class. Students may turn in assignments by email or by hand, and Father Michael returns much of their graded work by email. However, class exams are written on paper in class. Father Michael is not yet ready to offer exams online, as he notes that even the AP exams are not online, though he points his students to practice AP exams online for their benefit. In addition to posted materials online, the students have a traditional hardback textbook, The American Pageant, as the primary source for reading, homework questions, and review for tests.

The students in AP U.S. History do much of their essay writing and other homework online to turn in to Father Michael by email, and he notifies them by email when he has posted something new to their class web portal, such as assignments and documents for them to read or videos for them to watch. All of the students feel very comfortable using technology on their laptop computers, IPhones, and IPads for this purpose. Student IPhones sometimes become a source of contention in class when students are using them to text other students or look up material that is not class related. Worse, students sometimes use their phones to film other students, which is against school policy. Father Michael often has to remind his students about the rules regarding cell phone usage in class and in school.

Father Michael does not use video games for this class, though I showed him the Mission US website to see if he thinks his students might get some use out of it. His students all have favorite video games, some of which they will play in study hall and during lunch. However, most of these games are for personal enjoyment rather than for class work. The young men do enjoy video games where two or more of them can play at the same time on their individual cell phones or laptop computers. As I am a study hall monitor for three periods per day at Benedictine High School I can attest to hearing the excited cries of the students when playing these games. Yet, it seems that most students are not doing much with video games for education, though I am aware that one of the math teachers uses a number of online math games in his class.

The students in 4th period AP U.S. History do not collaborate on group projects, as all of their writing is personal. However, Father Michael encourages creativity in their writing, allowing them to use political cartoons, YouTube videos, relevant music, and photos to bring out the historical period they are attempting to convey. The students have recently been studying the Jazz Age of the 1920s, and there was a great discussion in class about different musical styles and popular artists of that period. The students had great familiarity with the material from their personal writing and insights on the topic. Though history does not usually allow as much self-expression as English Language Arts for most students, Father Michael encourages the young men to offer and express their opinions about the controversial issues of the past surrounding U.S participation in World War I, the New Deal, and World War II. The students particularly connect with music and videos from those time periods, which they can readily access on their technological devices to make U.S. History much more interesting and enjoyable.

The implications of digital storytelling and multimodal composition for AP U.S. History students at Benedictine High School in the class I have been observing are not fully realized at this time, as the students are not putting together videos for class presentations, as this class is lecture and teacher-centered. Students do have the opportunity to offer some multimodal composition in their work to be handed into the teacher by email or by hand. However, I could see asking my future students to prepare their own digital stories for presentation to the class, and ask them to really put themselves into the material, using their own historical interests as a basis for putting together a multimodal composition that will really grab their enthusiasm and then present the composition to the class as a digital story for students to engage with and ask questions.