I chose to do my technology reflection over "Laptops on Expedition". This video took place in a Main Middle school with a 7th grade science class. The video starts off by showing a presentation by the students to an audience consisting of parents, teachers, and so called experts. The class prject was a to make a CD-ROM featuring information and interesting facts on endangered species. The students did their research on the internet, and then formatted the information they chose to use to a CD-ROM.
The school enrollment consists of a very diverse group. It was noted that the school has 28 different languages that are spoken and also that 60% of the students qualified for free or reduced lunches. However, ever since the curriculum was altered to fit in this new wave of technology projects, the school's standardized test scores went from the bottom 1/3 in the state to the top 1/3. The school chose to alter its curriculum by intergrating the basic subjects of science, math, social studies, and english with artwork, community members, and field work. They chose not to use text books for their teaching of the class.
One example was for their CD-ROM project, they had so called experts of a particular specie come to the school and the students would interview them in class while being recorded on video. Then, they would take this video and edit it for their project in their video production class. I was very interested in the fact that they were offered a video production class since I did not have one in my school.
All the success does not go to the school however. The school connected with local business people such as Phillip Rhinelander, who is president of Xpress Copy Services, and an accomplished documentary film maker from Huey Filmaker, who helped with developing the video so that it would look as professional as possible.
However, last and most important fact that was mentioned was that every student in class did his or her own assigned work for the project. I feel that projects like this will help everybody in class be intrigued and become more involved in their subjects, this preventing any student from being "left behind".
My video was on the site of http://www.edutopia.org and select video review then select Laptop on expeditions.
Ann thinks I am standing on a ladder, however she doesn't know THE fact that I'm half white, half amazing.
