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MassCUE Announces First Annual Initiative Grant Recipients
MassCUE is pleased to announce the recipients of its first annual initiative grants:
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ABC's and 123's – Keyboarding Strategies K-4
Gabrielle A. Richard-Harrington, Greenfield Middle School
Greenfield Public Schools 
The revised Massachusetts Instructional Technology Standards lowers the age by which many technology skills, including keyboarding, should be mastered. Efficient keyboarding transforms learning by establishing a solid foundation to successful technology integration. Students who are taught to keyboard correctly from an early age are able to use a computer more effectively to access curriculum and spend more time on core content. ABC's and 123's – Keyboarding Strategies K-4 enhances instructional practice through professional development activities that impart the tools and instill the confidence K-4 teachers and parents need to teach and support proper keyboarding skills. |
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Accessible, Leveled, Document Library for Assistive Technology
Anne Sullivan, Joseph W. Martin, Jr. School
North Attleborough Public Schools 
Students will be able to access content-based reading through both auditory and visual perceptual modes. This will be presented in the classroom on an LCD projector while reading material in the classroom. The scanner will copy text into a document library. The LCD projector will allow for whole class instruction with reading comprehension strategies including, but not limited to background knowledge, connection to other text or life experience, text features, questions and inferring. The document library will allow students to access at classroom computer clusters, as well as at the student's home. The struggling reader will be able to connect meaning to current text, which may be decoded correctly, but not necessarily understood. |
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Brookline Book Review Podcast Project
Elizabeth B. Davis, John D. Runkle School
Public Schools of Brookline  The Brookline Book Review Podcast Project provides the opportunity for students K-8 to podcast about books. Students can share their opinions with students both in their community, and around the world. Emerging readers can talk about books that have been read to them and more sophisticated readers can talk about books that they have read. This project will create a database of book review podcasts that will become a valuable resource for students looking for a good book to read. |
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Cape POD Casts
Margaret Verdi, Falmouth High School
Falmouth Public Schools  “Cape POD Casts” provides downloadable curriculum resources in the form of podcasting with a collaboration of Computer Graphics/Webdesign Teacher and other High School subject areas such as Music Technology/Theory. Classroom teachers and students combine their talents to create podcasts to share online and utilize online podcasts to learn from others. Collaborating resources and talents, teachers will facilitate students integrating productions of digital imagery designs and musical accompaniment. |
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Improving Collaboration in Object-Oriented Computer Programming
Michael Englander, North Attleborough High School
North Attleborough Public Schools
I propose to use this grant to enhance courses in Object-Oriented Programming. The funds will be used to purchase classroom management software that will enable the teacher to more effectively assist students in learning to write application software. Current technology does not permit the class to share techniques developed and does not permit the instructor to either broadcast instruction from his computer to the class or to broadcast instruction to a particular student. The ability of students to work interactively and efficiently as a team to develop their programming skills is hampered, as is the ability of the instructor to quickly and efficiently instruct individual students or to note trends in how student work is progressing. Current technology does not permit the instructor, for example, to view one or several students' computers to instruct them as they work and students cannot collaborately broadcast their work as it develops. With the purchased software, I will be able to view and assist one or several students efficiently and collaboratively from my workstation. By my ability to view workstations simultaneously, I will be able to note trends among students (either in errors, difficulties, or positive developments) and will thus be able to use these trends in adjusting explanations or class exercises. In addition, I will be able to demonstrate new techniques by broadcasting from my workstation to all or some of the students' workstations. The new software will greatly enhance student collaboration and group work by permitting a student who has discovered an innovative approach to broadcast his/her technique to all of the students (with instructor permission, of course). |
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Lights, Camera, Action…Reaching Readers and Researchers
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Student Produced PSAs Highlighting My Own Café
Linda Redding, Silver Lake Regional High School
Silver Lake Regional School District 
Students from Silver Lake Regional Middle School and High School will work cooperatively under the direction of library teachers Linda Redding and Vicki Wright to create a Public Service Announcement highlighting My Own Café.
My Own Café is the interactive online site for teens between the ages of 13 and 18 created by the Southeastern Massachusetts Regional Library System. This site offers teens an online space where they can talk about reading, music, and even get homework help. Using their public library card, students register to make use of the site. Designed with teens in mind My Own Café is a one-stop site for music downloads, discussions, and research. Students are able to search for and reserve books, enter a topic and search several databases, and even have access to a 24/7 librarian who is ready to offer homework help.
Students involved with the production will gain experience in media literacy, video production, as well as introduce many students and teachers to the recreational and informational features available on My Own Café.
Students throughout Southeastern Massachusetts will become aware of the advantages of using My Own Café for researching and communication. |
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Online Resource Handbook
Ellen Royalty and Thomas Vaughn
Middlesex Community College 
Colleges, high schools, and educational institutions in general are moving away from print resources in favor of online resources. In order for students to function properly in the 21 st Century, they must know how to distinguish a reliable resource from an unreliable one. Too often when students do a search on the Internet for a resource to make a point in their research paper, they accept the first “hit” as an acceptable source to be quoted or referenced. Colleges and schools are investing substantial amounts of money to provide valid resources for student research. Many times students shy away from the use of these resources due to the lack of knowledge of what exactly is available and due to the inexperience of how to use these subscription databases. Our grant intends to address these problems. We will produce an Online Resource Handbook that will describe what typical databases are available to students, how to understand the levels of academic rigor contained in the resources, and how to use them for research. The Handbook will be distributed to Massachusetts Community Colleges and selected high schools in our region around Bedford, MA. We intend to sustain the effectiveness of the Handbook by posting it in as a pdf document on the Middlesex Community College website and perhaps the MassCUE website. |
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Probing Science - Understanding Data
Ed Biggs, E. Ethel Little School
North Reading Public Schools 
The Probing Science project utilizes temperature and motion probes to provide three Grade 5 classes (66 students) with needed experiences collecting data, analyzing numeric and graphic representations of data, and extending their understanding of temperature and motion phenomena. The project focuses on Grade 5 competencies relating to Scientific Method, Changes in States of Matter, Transfer of Energy, and Energy and Motion. . By converting the school computer lab into an experimental environment, students will develop competencies in using probes and software interfaces, test conjectures/hypotheses, improve written and visual science vocabulary of changes in motion and physical states of matter and communicate results clearly and effectively. |
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Radio BRCPS Project
Robyn P. Viloria
Boston Renaissance Charter Public School 
The Radio BRCPS project will integrate the use of iPods and microphones with our virtual poetry studio ( http://poetrystudio.blogspot.com ) and student book club. Both the poetry studio and book club are new components of Boston Renaissance's literacy curriculum in grades 4-6. The virtual poetry studio is a partnership between Boston Renaissance Charter Public School and two elementary schools in Wellesley Public Schools (Hardy and Hunnewell). Students have started posting their own poems for discussion and our online discussion is scheduled to begin in January 2007. A MassCUE grant will allow BRCPS to purchase two iPods and microphones so our students can record themselves reading their poems aloud and then post the audio files in our poetry blog. Book club students will be able to use the equipment to record their own book reviews and post them on our school web site. |
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21 st Century Communication: Podcasting in the Classroom
Michael L. Whittier, Sutton Memorial High School
Sutton Public Schools 
This project seeks to establish a comprehensive podcasting studio through the web design course curriculum. Students in the web design will engineer, construct and develop programming of the podcasting studio. The studio and the skills learned and mastered by students will become a resource for other curriculum area teachers and provide informative and creative programming for a low wattage radio station that will also be available through the school website and play on the educational cable access channel.
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