Wednesday, October 2, 2002
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Wednesday, October 2, 2002 |
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Local school wins national award
Competing against 16,000 schools across the nation, River's Edge Elementary, in Clayton County near Fayetteville, captured one of three Emerging Technology Awards awarded by AT&T Broadband for creating an "almost-like-being-there-experience" of Fayetteville's Civil War events. The school won second place for its project, "In Our Backyard." Led by Carol Mohor, Susan Miller, Phyllis Huff and Denise Thompson, the project used such tools as video, computer scanners and digital photography, along with Internet research. The collaborative effort between fifth grade students and the community taught them about their area's Civil War events and the people who once lived, fought and died in that conflict. The students ultimately produced a virtual field trip that was uploaded to a school Web site they created and maintained as online historians, which was available to all River's Edge Elementary students. From historical journeys like the children from Fayetteville, to digital archeological digs happening in Minnesota, innovative teachers in more than 16,000 U.S. schools are creatively using their free classroom cable services to captivate young learners. The AT&T Broadband Emerging Technology Awards add to this free classroom connection by bestowing cash grants and digital video cameras to the teachers with the most innovative projects using cable-television programming or Internet resources in the classroom. "We are consistently amazed by the creative lesson planning that we see in teachers' award entries every year," said Jennifer Snyder, director of Education Outreach for AT&T Broadband. "The program, 'In Our Own Backyard,' really brought to contemporary life an experience that greatly impacted the historical development of the community." Last year, 54 teams of teachers and school administrators won AT&T Broadband Emerging Technology Awards. After receiving their cash grant and digital cameras, each class implemented their lesson plan. At the end of the school year, these winners, including the team from River's Edge, were able to submit the results for a second round of awards. River's Edge tied for second place, coming in behind a school from New Hampshire. The other Award winners also used innovation and technology, though they had widely varying themes: The Grand Prize Winner was the Kindergarten and Second Grade Dinosaur Cooperative Unit from Main Street School in Exeter, N.H. Teachers Janet Boggess, Nina Baillargeon and Jane McCaffery led the program in which second grade students worked cooperatively with kindergarteners to learn about dinosaurs. Using educational programming from NETWORKS and informational Internet sites about dinosaurs, second graders videotaped presentations and dinosaur models to share with the younger children. The kindergartners then prepared watercolor pictures and dinosaur poems and relayed their learnings back to the older children, again via videotape. A final video of the project was prepared and presented on BookTalk, a weekly elementary television show on EXTV, a local government and educational channel provided to AT&T Broadband cable customers in New Hampshire. The Second Place winner (tied), Digital Dig, was a project of Rutherford School in Stillwater, Minnesota. Led by Ellen Eigner, Karen Mason, Natasha Therager and Wayne Feller, the year-long program taught fifth and sixth graders about culture creation and the study of cultural elements, ancient culture research and the study of the classic cultures of Egypt, Greece and Rome. Participating students participated in Internet research, created websites and used video and digital resources in the year-long program.
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