Knox Fifth Grade Students Give Lesson in Technology to School Board

Mrs. Barnes and 5th grade presenters: Mrs. Barnes, Victoria Bulick, Colin Kulpa, Libby McEntee, Payton McIntyre, Mariah McKee, Allison Minix, and Cassie Waletzko

The Knox Community School Board got a lesson in technology at their recent school Board meeting and the teachers were 5th grade students.

“We just showed the Board what we’ve been doing this year in technology,” said Laura Barnes, Computer Applications Teacher at the Knox Elementary School. “We’ve started all of the grade levels on various new technologies IPads, some web tools such as Glogster and My Big Campus so we showed the Board some of those things. Glogster is a web tool which is basically a cross between a blog and a virtual poster. The kids can use them for presentations with projects, they can use them as a creative journal – there are a lot of educational tools for it.”

Libby McEntee demonstrates Glogster

Several students presented different applications to the Board, including the Knox Redskin Riot website. One of those students was Victoria Bulick who talks today about the My Big Campus application the students work with.

“My Big Campus is like Facebook only more educational. We talk about school and we talk about what we did over the summer and how we use technology.”

Colin Kulpa shows the Board the Redskin Riot website he maintains

Cassie Waletzko, another 5th grade student says technology helps them in many aspects, even reading assignments.

“We have AR, which is short for Accelerated Reader, where we read a book and take a test on it. It helps us learn about the book.”

The School Board will meet on Monday, May 2nd at 6:30 p.m. where the Board is expected to approve a contract with Apple to move forward with an initiative to equip students with their own computers.

Superintendent A.J. Gappa, Corporation Attorney William Satterlee, and board members Mike Yankauskas, Gary Dulin and Nathan Marcum follow along with the students