Downstairs on Wednesday and upstairs on Thursday, the nearly 100 students in 14 classrooms of the Sayville Learning Center displayed their interactive technology projects during a curriculum and technology expo last week. Using an array of computer tools from Photo Story to PowerPoint and other learning resources, such as books and research, the students in grades kindergarten through fifth (with a few sixth graders sprinkled) in created a variety of projects, including a six-minute movie about their school week.
The students at the learning center are a diverse group who are challenged, but through the application of the technology incorporated throughout the curriculum with Smart boards and other tools and programs, learning becomes less an adversity and more an opportunity.
“This is part of the integrated student curriculum function and future function in the world,” said Principal Linda Conroy, regarding the use of technology and noted that this type of learning is “instructive and invaluable part of the students’ lives.” For her students, Conroy added, using technology produces more of a hands-on feel to learning concepts and allows the children to demonstrate what they are learning and actually see a genuine finished product. For Mario, that completed product was an assortment of projects from scrolls that unrolled similar to a movie depicting several states, to creating suitcases that displayed pictures and information about the states and useful for tourists.
“I already knew a lot of history, then got into it studying about it with books and computers,” said Mario as he deftly showed off his class project. There were even poems written by the students about the states that began each line with a letter from the state’s name. Fifth-graders who will be transitioning to the Jefferson Center next year, which is the middle school, produced a movie and books about their school days. The movie, introduced live during one of the showings by John, was created using Photo Story and is a sharp-looking production that featured dissolves, wipes and diamond and star-shaped edit segues between the scenes, and included individual student voiceovers.
“We made our own books using pictures; we wrote and had color,” said Alena, who showed off everyone’s books, which also included a page for autographs. In Terry Corriss’s class, students were taught to write in Braille using a Braille typewriter by teacher-in-residence, Albert Rizzi. A former kindergarten teacher and principal, Rizzi contracted meningitis three years ago, which caused his blindness. For the past five weeks, Rizzi, along with his guide dog Doxie, has worked with the students, teaching them about overcoming a sensory loss, while displaying empathy for their challenges. “He has had a huge impact on their lives, teaching them about Helen Keller and using their other senses,” said Corriss, whose class created a computer generated, Jeopardy like game featuring a Helen Keller category. Rizzi said that the children have taught him as much or even more than he has taught them, but thinks he has “opened their eyes to rise above their challenges” where they can “create opportunities.”
The second floor was also abuzz with first-, second- and third-graders playing a fill-in-the-blank spelling game using a Smart Board. Hearty applause followed every correct solution. Some students generated several informational graphs using researched data involving the weather, sports and television, while another class invited author Jack Gantos, writer of the Joey Pigza book series. Though Gantos had to decline the invitation, due to a prior engagement in Moscow (Russia), the children created a project that encourages other students to purchase Gantos’ books. “The students are engaging in activities and focusing longer,” Corriss said about her students. It appeared that this could be said of all the children, who were excited about displaying their projects and learning skills.