GENTRY — Four educators from the Gentry School District were spotlighted on the district's website for their use of technology in furthering educational goals.
Kindergarten teacher Angie Moore, who has been with the district for eight years, was featured forher use of a new overhead projection system which makes it possible for her to project books and letters of the alphabet onthe board to teach her students the letters, sounds and to begin learning sight words.
Moore says the new technology makes it possible for her to involve her students in learning letters and words while broadening their horizons with photos and books.
In the Intermediate School library, Liz Newlun, who has been with the district for 20 years, uses a bank of 10 student computers to enable library users to find and read books, take accelerated reading tests and access the Internet and library systems for research. She also uses a new 55-inch flat screen which can be connected to her iPad to teach lessons. Playaway isused to allow students to listen to books while following along in the text of the book. She also hopes to begin using a digital media player called Playaway View to display the text and photos to students as they hear the books so that they can connect the audio with the text and photographs in the books.
Terri Swicegood, sixthgrade science teacher whohas been with the Gentry district for 19 years, says she has seen the "before and after" of technology use in the classroom. When she began teaching, she used film strips to supplement material in the textbook. Later came VCR tapes. Now she is able to cover her textbook material and supplement it with video clips to reinforce what she has taught. She can use web-based materials and even have her students work through online lessons on sites such as kidsastronomy.com. Swicegood says she projects PowerPoint presentations and a variety of media in her classroom, making teaching and learning the material fun for her and the students. She says it's still a struggle to teach her students how to apply the information they have learned.
Marty Edmiston, who has been a coach and high school math teacher in Gentry for five years, uses the Odyssey Math program to help students in areas where they are deficient and get them back on track and improve their overall math scores. He says he used to have to review all areas with a class of students in remedial math but now can tailor his instruction to meet the individual needs of students and allow them to progress as quickly as they master the material.
Edmiston said the instruction technology has changed the way he teaches. "I used to be the sage on the stage, but now I'm the guide on the side," he said. He called Odyssey Math a "fantastic program" and "very efficient" and said he hoped that use of such materials may eventually remove the need for students to take remediation classes.
Edmiston said he uses Odyssey Math but expects similar programs to be used soon in Gentry to help students in other areas of study, such as English, biology and physics.
Gentry School District has posted videos of the aforementioned teachers explaining their use of technology in the classroom on its website at http://gentrypioneers.com/techspotlight/index.html.
School News, Pages 11 on 02/08/2012