Connecting with the younger generation - digitally, that is
Local teachers using technology to enrich the classroom experience
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Seventh grader Dana Lemoine (right) checks out her personal page that is part of her English class' social networking site along with other students at the Eastern Suffolk BOCES "Celebration of Technology in Education" event. Students do homework and communicate with each other on the site.
In the Mount Sinai School District, students in English teacher Karl O'Leary's seventh grade class sign in to a social networking site to do homework.
It's a teaching method that goes beyond the boundaries of the classroom walls, according to Mr. O'Leary. And his students love it.
Mr. O'Leary and a small group of students joined other students and teachers from school districts across Long Island last Friday to show off how they are incorporating technology into their everyday learning experiences.
The showcase, held at Stony Brook University, was part of Eastern Suffolk BOCES' "celebration of technology in education." Students, parents and teachers alike roamed between exhibits, excited to see new technologies and how other students are using them to learn and hopefully go home with a few new ideas themselves.
Mr. O'Leary's students rave about using a Web site to learn.
"It's fun to tell my mom I'm doing homework when she asks what I'm doing online," said Sarah Catterson.
The students rave about how they are able to customize their personal Web pages to express themselves and communicate in a safe forum with their friends online.
The rule for the site, which is monitored by Mr. O'Leary, is that he has to be able to show whatever is on it to principal Robert Grable or it can't be on there, Sarah said. Students who abuse the Web site, Roland adds, lose their accounts and have to do their work on paper, "which is not as fun."
In the Rocky Point School District, students at the Frank J. Carasiti Elementary School took their process of learning about conserving clean water to the next level, visiting Web sites together as a class to learn more about water pollution. After a hands-on experiment on ways to clean water and discussion on how water treatment facilities clean water, students created "save water reminders" to show family members, classmates and faculty ways to save water using MaxShow, a computer program that has a user-friendly interface for children that helps them create Microsoft Power Point, Excel and Word documents.
In partnership with the Blue Ocean Institute, first and second-year ESL students at Longwood High School used Power Point, Google Earth, Google Ocean and SMARTboards as they learned about the ocean, all the while building their English language skills. Many of the students come from places where they haven't had the opportunity to use computers, said the institute's Patricia Paladines, and the workshop enabled them to gain both computer and English literacy while learning about the ocean at the same time.
Students who have recently come from Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Turkey, France and Namibia raved about what they had learned.
"It was wonderful, I liked it," said Emilka Caraballo, who moved to Long Island nine months ago from the Dominican Republic.
"I've never had this type of experience before."
asnyder@northshoresun.com
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