Port Jefferson students exhibited their technological abilities alongside hundreds of Long Island school districts at the eighth annual Celebration of Technology in Education at Stony Brook University, hosted by the Eastern Suffolk BOCES Model Schools Program. For weeks, the students worked with their teachers to develop a computer presentation for the event, and the results were both exciting and ones that can be easily utilized in classroom instruction.
Using SMART Board technology, Monica Consalvo and Christine Austen worked with seventh graders to create a Scene It style game board with questions linked to New York State learning standards. The students redesigned the original game board to mimic the floor plan of a school building equipped with desks that are linked to curriculum-based question cards. The game is won when a player answers the questions correctly and exits the school building to the awaiting school bus.
Teacher Carla Greco and her students demonstrated the use of SMART Board technology to explore old-time radio shows. After reading Of Mice and Men, the students were able to construct a script and adapt the wording to a radio show format. They recorded their radio show through podcast software and used the SMART Board technology to showcase the script and animations as prompts.
Students in Nancy Bacherty's class used Adobe Photoshop and other digital editing programs to edit their digital photos. They conducted research on a geographic location or object in the photo and wrote a script to record for each picture. Using Photo Story software, the students then placed their photos in the desired sequence with captions, music, and a script narrative. "The use of technology in the classroom is endless, as seen in these demonstrations," stated Director of Technology William Brennan. "The teachers and the students were so creative, and their use of technology makes learning fun for the students."
Monday, February 8th, 2016