Porter-Gaud class garners national recognition

Porter-Gaud School teacher Doug Bergman overhauled the school's computer science program three years ago to make it more hands-on and more appealing to a broader group of students.

The redesigned course for juniors required students to pick a passion, design an Xbox 360 game to teach others about it, and create a business plan to sell it. That innovative approac

h to teaching students technical skills alongside entrepreneurial ones earned Bergman a national honor this past weekend.

He was one of 11 educators across the country selected by Microsoft Corp. as a winner in the 2011 U.S. Innovative Education Forum, an event recognizing teachers and administrators who creatively use technology to improve the way kids learn.

Bergman placed second in the "use of technology for learning" category and will advance to compete against educators worldwide at the Partners in Learning Global Forum in Washington in November.

"Even if I hadn't won, it still probably would've been the best experience in my education career," Bergman said. "It's certainly fulfilling, and I'm still kind of buzzing."

Bergman forged a new partnership with the College of Charleston to help redesign its computer science courses. Bergman knew the college had improved its computer science program, and he worked for a year with its leader, Chris Starr, along with Porter-Gaud's information technology director, Phil Zaubi, to improve Porter-Gaud's offerings.

They wanted to better prepare students for the real-world or for college, and they wanted to connect with students who didn't consider themselves "techies," Bergman said. That desire resulted in new courses that were technically difficult but more open-ended and allowed students to pursue their interests to learn lessons, he said. The program has grown from less than a dozen kids to roughly three times as many.

Porter-Gaud School senior Sarah Fair is the kind of student Bergman had in mind when revamping the program. She wasn't considering a career in computer science, but her ambition to be either a fiction writer or geneticist changed after taking his classes. She hopes to major in computer science and pursue a career in that field.

"Until then, I hadn't really done much with computers," she said. "I'd used the internet and knew how to install games, but computers didn't hold much appeal. I thought programming would be boring and useless, but I found out that I'm really good at it, and it's really more interesting than I thought it would be."

Porter-Gaud is one of Charleston's most exclusive private schools, and it requires all students to take a computer science course. Those who stick with the program learn how to make cell phone applications and websites, and they can earn dual credit their senior year.

The school's class for juniors is the most distinctive and has received the most attention. Bergman has made presentations about the school's overall computer science program at a conference in Paris and at the biggest technology education conference in the United States.

His students created a wide array of games, from a pharaoh exploring Egyptian pyramids while avoiding traps to another tracing a lab rat being used for scientific testing of beauty products.

Fair said she wanted to create an adventure game with monsters and magic, and mythology was a way to incorporate both. She used Homer's Odyssey to build a multi-level game.

"We ended up with one thing that took all this effort, and we could see how well we actually had done," she said. "So the result of this year's course was really wonderful."

Reach Diette Courrégé at 937-5546.