General Brown students get tech savvy

DEXTER — As technology improves, so does learning for General Brown Central School District students, according to Christy S. Williams, district instructional technology specialist.

Over the past few years, the district has increased the number of technological tools all students use to learn a variety of subjects. She said technological advances have enhanced the learning experience, particularly for junior-senior high school students.

"Some of our students are working on moviemaker projects, and photo story projects, which is a compilation of still photos and videos as well," Mrs. Williams said.

"They're also working on some memoirs, poetry and we've done digital storytelling, and the public service announcements primarily focus with the high school students because they work on topics such as drunk driving and teen pregnancies."

Some of the public service announcements that are created are geared toward elementary school pupils and are shared with them in the Brownville-Glen Park and Dexter schools.

Classes that work on some of those activities use the district's laptop cart, which consists of 30 mini HP laptops. A printer also stays with the cart.

Mrs. Williams, also the Madison-Oneida Board of Cooperative Educational Services' instructional technology specialist, said a classroom set of iPods has been used for podcasts, which are files that consist of various types of media.

"Podcasts are put up on the Web site to allow accessibility for learning to take place outside of school hours, and that's really what we're pushing for right now," she said.

Another hands-on technology teaching tool the district uses is InterWrite tablets, which students can use to underline key terms and write freehand, and have that work show up on a projector screen, said Tina M. Heckman, junior-senior high school principal. Use of the tablets is more common in English and math classes, she said.

All of those technologies, and more, will be highlighted during the district's second annual K-12 technology fair from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. today in the junior-senior high school's old gymnasium, 17643 Cemetery Road.

Mrs. Williams said the fair will feature approximately 20 student/teacher teams that will showcase progress they've made using various technologies. Video conferences, visual communicator projects, Internet safety presentations and other technology topics will be discussed and displayed.