IN THE CLASSROOM -- Students find it is easy, fun to do research on

the Web

Danette Goulet

COSTA MESA--Gone are the days of searching through card catalogs

transcribing obscure numbers and pouring over encyclopedias.

Now, when students need to do research for school projects, they go

online. All the information they could possibly need is right at the tip

of their fingers with the click of a computer mouse.

Spanish students at Estancia High School filed into the computer lab

recently, each staking claim to a computer terminal, where they began to

search for information on various topics for an upcoming class project.

Theirs is a combination class of Spanish for Spanish speakers and an

advanced placement Spanish literature class.

They were researching famous Hispanic figures for a presentation that

they will be expected to give in a few weeks.

Sophomore Diana Alderete downloaded a file of a painting from a virtual

museum that depicted Tupac Amaru, an Inca chief being drawn and

quartered.

Others read about the lives of such figures as Gabriel Garcia Marquez

from Columbia and Ana Matute from Spain.

The immediate responses to their Internet searches made research easy and

fun, students said.

Their instructor, Monica McCrea-Steele, who students affectionately call

Mrs. M&M;, gave them just one direction: go to the Web sites that give

information in Spanish, not English.

“All these kids are bilingual and they would rather do it in English than

Spanish,” McCrea-Steele said.

So, rather than logging onto the popular Yahoo search engine they use

each day, the students turned to Yahoo En Espanol.

Since Estancia High became the second “digital high school” in the

Newport-Mesa Unified School District, teachers such as McCrea-Steele have

begun to take advantage of all the new technology. Her students even take

their tests and quizzes online, she said.

“It’s so much better than taking tests the regular way,” Alderete said.