Athens, Ga. – The use of technology by students at Commerce Primary School and students at a dozen other schools across Georgia will be the focus of the 6th annual Capitol Tech event at the State Capitol Building in Atlanta on Tuesday, March 9.
Capitol Tech is a collaborative effort between Georgia’s schools and the state’s 13 Educational Technology Centers. The team from Commerce Primary School is representing the 15 school systems in Northeast Georgia served by the ETC based in the University of Georgia’s College of Education.
This event is held each year to demonstrate to state legislators the positive impact that technology funding is having on instruction in Georgia’s public schools.
Capitol Tech spotlights students using the fundamental technology tools necessary to succeed in the 21st century. Students and teachers are eager for their local legislators to see firsthand how these tools are helping increase student achievement and build community partnerships.
At this year’s Capitol Tech, Commerce Primary first-grade teacher Stacey Miller and four of her students, Abby Tolbert, Amanda Gonzalez, Taylor Rylee and Daniel Nash, will show legislators how they produce videos in their class to learn concepts in an innovative way. Miller and her students have acquired the technology they use through a Georgia Department of Education Teachers, Teamwork and Technology (T3) grant. The T3 Grant focuses on using project-based learning methodologies in the classroom to improve instruction to impact overall student achievement.
As part of this grant, Miller received a mounted SMART Board interactive whiteboard with ceiling-mounted projector, an ELMO visual presenter, a set of Classroom Performance System student voting devices, a wireless mouse slate, a digital camera, five wireless student laptops and five handheld mp3/video players. With training from the UGA ETC in electronic resources such as GALILEO and digital-era tools of podcasting, blogging and multimedia production, Miller and her students began creating and publishing instructional videos that are posted on the class Web site for parents, students and the community to access for a variety of uses.
In their Capitol Tech presentation, Miller’s students will describe how they make these videos and how the process has enabled them to learn the content outlined in the Georgia Performance Standards.
For more information on UGA’s Educational Technology Center, see ttc.coe.uga.edu/staff.html.
