JAY – Just the soft tapping on the keys and mouse pads could be heard Monday as students worked on laptops to gather information, create maps and make charts for PowerPoint presentations.
It was day two of the project in Jay High School teacher Mike Simoneau’s world studies class. It’s the first time though, Simoneau said Monday, and he didn’t know how long it would take students to finish the project.
“It just like writing a new cookbook,” he said.
The sophomore students had each chosen a country to research to see how it compared to the United States in terms of population, agriculture, economy, industry and in other ways.
Hillary Castonguay, 16, was putting together a map page of Iraq.
“There is a lot happening over there right now, and it’s interesting,” Castonguay said Monday of her choice.
Katie Morin, 16, was researching Colombia; others were researching India, France, Russia, Iran and China, among other countries.
Simoneau shared some sites such as CIA Factbook and data he found on Iran on the Internet with the class from his laptop on his desk, which projected to a screen in front of the room.
He repeatedly said, “Save early, save often” in case of a power outage or a laptop’ battery goes dead.
Castonguay said she would rather go back to pen and paper and poster board to do the project because she finds the laptops slow at times.
“I have a computer at home so I can look things up there,” she said. There is also a filter that prohibits access to certain sites.
Morin said she liked working on the laptops.
“I just like working with computers,” Morin said. “I think you can learn more.”
Micah Parker, 15, said he liked working with the Internet rather than encyclopedias.
When 80 students log on to the Internet at the beginning of a period, the system can be slow at first, Randy Easter, a Jay school technology integrator, said Monday. But the system is run on one of the fastest networks available.
While some students thought the computers were slow, others thought they were faster than what they have at home and that makes it easier to get information.
All in all the information seemed to be quickly accessed from the Internet and implemented into student projects on their computers.
“It requires a lot of patience,” Simoneau said of using laptops to teach. “You want to do more than you can, but you get fantastic surprises.”
While students were working on their own projects, Easter was showing Simoneau some tips on the computer. Easter is helping teachers learn to use technology more to teach in their classrooms.
Jay Information Technology Director Frank Williams said Thursday teachers are using technology more and more in their classroom.
A trip down the halls showed teachers using technology in English, math, business classes among others to teach their subjects.
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