Q&A: Smartening Up the Classroom

School technology specialist gives the lowdown on his district's investment in Smart Boards

By Bridget McCrea

The Clarke County School District's mission to install whiteboards in its classrooms dates back about seven years, but it wasn't until 2006 that more than 1,000 Smart Boards were installed in its 13 elementary, four middle and three high schools. "We had vendors come in, and we experimented with a few different options by installing four or five boards in one school to see how they worked," said Steve Piazza, technology integration support specialist for the Athens, GA-based school district, "but it was nothing like this."...

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More Schools Turn to Gaming for Math Education

Following up on our recent case study on gaming in math education, several schools have begun adopting Tabula Digita's DimensionM algebra and pre-algebra game-based learning system. The company reported that 75 schools in eight states have adopted the technology and brought video gaming into the classroom....

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STEM Education: Prepping Students for Science

Do students lose interest in science as they progress through the education system? The 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress science results suggest so, showing steadily declining student achievement in science between grades 4 and 12. In that national assessment, 68 percent of fourth graders performed at or above the Basic achievement level, compared with 59 percent in grade 8 and 54 percent in grade 12....

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Panasonic Intros Plasma Bundles for Education

Panasonic's Professional Display unit has launched two new plasma display bundles designed for classroom presentation. The bundles include one of two 10-series plasma displays and a cart with an optional 802.11 b/g wireless presentation module....

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Lexia Updates PreK-12 Reading Suite

Lexia Learning Systems has released Lexia Reading v5, an update to the company's suite of reading tools for pre-kindergarten through grade 12. Lexia said the new version was beta tested by more than 4,500 students at "hundreds of teachers and administrators" at 10 elementary, middle, and high schools....

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Wildform Debuts Hosted E-Learning Service

Wildform, a developer of multimedia tools primarily for online presentations, has unveiled a new hosted service for educators called Wildform Online. The service is designed to provide educators with tools that help them track how users interact with their learning materials and tests....

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Education Plaza

Education Plaza has joined the 1105 Media family of ed tech resources, which includes THE Journal, Campus Technology, FETC, and the very newsletter you're reading right now. Education Plaza is a Web-based, state-specific resource center designed for K-12 administrators. Read about the acquisition at the link below.

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Share Your Best Practices

T.H.E. Journal is currently looking for the following types of articles for future issues and for our eNewsletter, T.H.E. SmartClassroom:

• School Perspectives - discuss a specific topic, trend, or concern about education technology.
• Case Studies - have you implemented technology and learned a lot from the experience? If so, share your efforts about what worked -- and what didn't.

If you have a potential article, or questions about the above topics, please e-mail [email protected]

EduHound.com

• EduHound Directory is a highly specialized K-12 educational directory with categorized resource links.
• EduHound Lesson Plans feature thousands of free lessons that meet state and national standards.
• EduHound Site Sets are collections of topic-based online resources.

The site boasts thousands of visitors per week, as well as a weekly newsletter, EduHound Weekly.

Awesome Clipart for Educators

Awesome Clipart for Educators offers educators FREE clipart, backgrounds, fonts, icons, worksheets, wallpaper and more. Click here to see how easy searching for clipart can be!