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HIGH-TECH CLASSROOMS

March 27, 2008

Future comes to school

Hazleton Area Career Center shows off technologies of the Classrooms for the Future Initiative.

By Steve Mocarsky smocarsky@timesleader.com
Staff Writer
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HAZLE TWP. – English teacher Bill Davenport picked up a pen and printed the word “hello” on what appeared to be a dry-erase board at the front of his classroom in the Hazleton Area Career Center.

A split second later, the hand-printed letters transformed, almost magically, into computer-generated text – the kind you’re reading right now.

The “magic” students and classroom guests witnessed was a demonstration of one of the latest developments in computer technology being used in classrooms across the state to help students compete in the high-tech global marketplace.

Hazleton Area School District officials Wednesday showed off some new classroom equipment purchased with a nearly $1 million state grant secured through Gov. Ed Rendell’s Classrooms for the Future initiative.

The grant put 800 laptop computers in the hands of students and teachers in 32 classrooms, and paid for Promethean Activboards – electromagnetic white boards – that make chalk boards and dry-erase boards seem archaic.

The Activboards are connected to computers, as are projectors that display images on the boards. In addition to their use for writing and drawing geometric shapes, electromagnetic pens used with the boards can function like a computer mouse, allowing tasks such as dragging and dropping text and pictures.

Teachers can use the software to design interactive lesson plans.

Superintendent Frank Victor said the grant also helped pay for coaches to instruct teachers in the new technology and assist them with designing and incorporating it into lesson plans.

Director of Curriculum and Instruction Deb Carr called the initiative “a marriage of technology, curriculum and instruction.”

District technology coordinator Dominic Pino said a team of district employees put together the grant application that made it possible.

State Rep. Todd Eachus, D-Butler Township, who pushed for the inclusion of the grant funding in the state budget, said the funding “puts our children in play to enter the 21st-century work force.”

Kevin O’Donnell, president of CAN DO – Hazleton area’s industrial development agency, was impressed. “I had no idea they were doing things that advanced. Businesses locating in the area want to know that the school district that will be supplying their labor is progressive. This information is what I’ll be using to talk to new businesses as they come in. What they’re doing there is tremendous,” he said.

WHAT’S NEXT

George Joseph, the Classrooms for the Future project coordinator in Hazleton Area School District, said the district has applied for additional funding to put 25 laptop computers in 50 more classrooms next year.

Steve Mocarsky, a Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 459-2005.

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