East Greenbush Central School District
Technology Newsletter
Volume 1, Issue 1, Winter 2010
29 Englewood Avenue • East Greenbush, NY 12061
WHAT’S NEW?
WEBSITES OF INTEREST
Welcome to the first edition of the East Greenbush
Central School District’s Technology Newsletter. The
goal in providing this newsletter is to keep faculty and
staff aware of new technology innovations that can be
integrated into instruction. The newsletter will also
serve as a means of sharing interesting technologyrelated projects that are occurring throughout our
schools.
TrackStar is your starting point for
online lessons and activities.
Simply collect Web sites, enter them into TrackStar,
add annotations for your students, and you have an
interactive, online lesson called a Track. Create your
own Track or use one of the hundreds of thousands
already made by other educators. Search the database
by subject, grade, or theme and standard for a quick
and easy activity. There is a fun Track already made for
each day of the year, too!
Your ideas for articles are welcome! If you are aware of
faculty, staff, or students using technologies in a unique
or innovative way to enhance learning, please let me
know.
Submissions and feedback should be forwarded to
David Hurst (hurstda@egcsd.org or 207.2048). Please
let me know what you think!
DIGITAL VIDEO NEWS
You don’t have to travel to Montréal or Paris to get
your news in French. Students in Pat Sacca’s French 5
class at Columbia High School are producing French
news video projects that have outstanding sound and
image quality. Windows Moviemaker, Jaycut on-line
video editing, YouTube, Photobucket, and MotionBox
are just a few of the tools that they are using. Pat has
found that digital video is an excellent way to showcase
student performance and proficiency. To check one
out go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIkcVk6JM0s
http://trackstar.4teachers.org/
QuizStar is a Webbased quiz
maker that enables you to create,
administer and automatically grade your quizzes online!
With QuizStar you can:
 Manage classes and quizzes
 Attach multimedia files to questions
 Make quizzes in multiple languages
 Access from any Internet-connected computer
 Allow students to complete and review
http://quizstar.4teachers.org/
RubiStar is a tool to help those of
you who want to use rubrics, but
do not have the time to develop them from scratch.
RubiStar provides generic rubrics that can simply be
printed and used for many typical projects and
research assignments. The unique thing about
RubiStar, however, is that it provides these generic
rubrics in a format that can be customized. You can
change almost all suggested text in the rubric to make
it fit your own project. RubiStar also does away with
the tedious typing of similar content across all the
various quality rating. When you choose a category to
evaluate, all of the quality ratings are filled in and are
ready to customize.
http://rubistar.4teachers.org/
PROMETHEAN ACTIVOTE
MIDI MUSIC CLASSES
Scott Halliday, David Hosley, and Susan Chrzan teach
Music in our Lives in the Columbia High School MIDI
(Musical Instrument Digital Interface) Lab. Students in
this course learn to intelligently listen to, perform, and
compose music using basic musical skills. Students
create electronic compositions using PC computers, MAudio MIDI keyboards, and different music software
packages. Finale Printmusic is music notation software
that allows the students to read and write music.
Sonar is software that is similar what one would find in
a professional recording studio. It allows students to
create a wide range of styles of music with traditional
instruments such as piano, percussion, and strings.
Students are also able to record and edit live
performances to be incorporated into MIDI
performances. Students are then able to burn music
CD's of the compositions they create. Students find it
exciting to be their own composers, performers, and
producers!
th
Students in Scott Siver’s 5 grade class at Genet
Elementary School are actively participating in class by
using ActiVote by Promethean. ActiVote is a classroom
response system that facilitates teaching activities.
Scott is able to pose multiple-choice questions to his
students via the Promethean Board and then each
student submits an answer to the question using a
handheld radio-frequency transmitter. Promethean’s
ActivInspire software collects the students’ answers
and produces a bar chart showing how many students
chose each of the answer choices. Scott is able to then
adjust his lesson in response to the bar chart.
Scott had the following to say about ActiVote: “The
ActiVote devices allow me to ask questions to the class
and I'm able to get the whole classes’ response rather
than just one student. The feedback is immediate, so if
enough of the class still is not meeting mastery, I can
re-teach the material or move on if warranted. The
software breaks down a lot of helpful info for me. I can
tell if one student is bringing down the results or if
different students are getting wrong answers. The kids
love them and it really increases student attention
levels. The class likes to shoot for a perfect class
score.”
The Technology Newsletter is a publication of:
East Greenbush Central School District
Office of Curriculum and Instruction
29 Englewood Avenue
East Greenbush, NY 12061
www.egcsd.org
Kitty Summers, Ed.D.
Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction
David Hurst
Director of Math, Science, and Technology
Lauri Phillips
Director of Languages and Social Studies
The East Greenbush Central School District's Board of
Education has established that it is the mission of the
District "To promote the maximum growth of every
child who is served educationally by its programs and
services."
-2-
DID YOU KNOW?
Driver education is one of the most popular electives at
Columbia High School. It is also one of the most unique
and innovative programs in the state. Driver education
teachers John Graham and Jeff Young not only take
students out on the road, but also have students take
the wheel in the largest and only simulation lab of its
kind in Upstate New York. The lab consists of 10 state
of the art driving simulators and has contributed to
keeping students at Columbia safe for over 5 years.
The simulator software provides an interactive curriculum with
numerous chapters and hundreds of driving scenarios. It is designed to
utilize a building block approach, which requires students to master each
lesson before moving on to the next. It also enables teachers to build
their own lesson plan by selecting the lessons they wish to integrate into
the program. Every chapter includes multiple chapter lessons,
providing a number of possible driving scenarios and exercises for the
student. The chapters incorporate pre-tests and chapter tests to
reinforce the material taught within each lesson. If a student is driving
recklessly, the exercise is terminated and the student fails the lesson.
Documentation of poor performance is recorded for the instructor and
the student must retake the lesson in order to achieve a passing score.
After first learning how to use the simulator, each student is thoroughly
taught the basics of car operation -- everything from dashboard controls
and functions, indicator lights, pre-drive checks, starting and stopping
the engine, moving off using both automatic and manual transmissions,
maneuvering at slow speeds and much more. After learning the basics,
the student is instructed how to make proper lane changes (entering/leaving a lane), rules of intersections, turning
left and right, merging and more. Each one of these chapters is taught without the use of traffic interaction. The
student is given the opportunity to first learn the concepts before traffic complexity is added to complicate the
experience. Once the student masters driving without traffic, they are introduced to the rigors of actual behind the
wheel driving. The student must learn to properly merge, exit a lane, handle busy intersections, follow vehicles, pass
and much more. The simulator also allows for advanced training – driving in adverse weather conditions, collision
avoidance and hazardous scenarios, driving while impaired, reaction time testing and a complete chapter on how to
properly maintain your vehicle.
You are more than welcome to visit and "take it for a spin".
TI  SMARTVIEW
Students in Sue Blond’s Algebra R class at Goff Middle School are examining
mathematics problems numerically, graphically, and analytically in a new and
exciting way. SmartView is calculator emulator software created by Texas
Instruments and allows Sue to project an interactive representation of a graphing
calculator to the entire class. She is able to control the calculator using the
Promethean Board which allows the students to see exactly what keys she is
pressing. A key press history is even displayed! It is an ideal demonstration tool
for leading classroom instruction.
-3-
BIRD WATCHING
OCEANOGRAPHY RESEARCH
It’s January and that means that students in Denise
st
Nahal’s 1 grade class at Bell Top Elementary School
are anxiously waiting for a cavity nesting bird to take
up residence in its nest box. Students will not have to
keep running outside to monitor the nest box however
as it is equipped with a camera that streams live video.
Students in Cindy Taylor’s Honors Earth Science class at
Columbia High School started off 2010 using Microsoft
PowerPoint embedded with YouTube video clips to
present various aspect of Oceanography. Students
were able to select their topics from a broad list and
were allowed to show their creative side in putting
their 20 minute presentations together.
The
technology really helped students in being able to
present their topics in a professional manner. Students
really enjoyed doing this project.
Students are hoping that this year is as exciting as last.
st
Last spring, 1 graders were able to watch on the
classroom TV monitor and from home via Denise’s web
page as a pair of house wrens built their nest. They
watched day by day as the "mom" laid five eggs and
then waited for the hatch day. Students were able to
see the chicks hatch and watch the parents feed them.
The chicks fed on grasshoppers and the like for 14 days
until they finally fledged!
CLASSROOM NEWSPAPER
To check it out go to:
http://vod.egcsd.org/wmm.swf
th
Students in Rosaire Higgins’ 5 grade class at Green
Meadow Elementary School are making a classroom
newspaper using Microsoft Publisher. The assignment
was inspired by the Andrew Clements book The Landry
News.
Rosaire is using the book and the assignment to link the
ELA and social studies standards. Students are learning
st
about the 1 amendment and honing their writing
skills. To help write their articles, the students are
using the district’s “Curriculum Web” and library sites
to do research.
-4-