T.C. Roekle is a highly respected educator who has solid leadership experience with a focus on innovative strategies to raise student and staff performance at the building and district level. T.C. is a member of the National Speakers Association; she has addressed thousands of educators at State and National Education Conferences, Technology Conferences and school communities.
Nationally Recognized EAST Program: Demonstrates How Students Can Provide Community Service Using Very Sophisticated Technology Tools
Far from the outdated, stereotypical picture of technology as cold and impersonal… take a look at how students are reaching out to their communities, with technology, and making a powerful contribution.
James Boardman, writer for eSchool News, describes how one high school program won the 2007 Founders Award:
May 1, 2007—Exciting things are happening in Star City, Arkansas. This small town of a little more than 2,000 people just learned that its high school Environmental and Spatial Technology (EAST) program was named the 2007 recipient of the Timothy R. Stephenson Founder's Award by the EAST Initiative, an educational nonprofit that oversees EAST programs nationally.
How did a small, rural school stand out from the field of more than 170 programs nationally? The school merely motivated its students to outperform anyone's expectations in providing community service using very sophisticated technology tools.
All students, regardless of past experience or previous expectations, are encouraged, expected, and required to work in teams that tackle self-selected community service projects. In the context of these projects, EAST students often move beyond being "merely" volunteers and begin assuming roles of responsibility for solving local issues.
Students in this program have access to a wide variety of technologies to help them in their projects--from GIS/GPS applications, computer-aided drafting tools, and digital film tools, to high-end animation and web design tools, computer programming tools, virtual reality design tools, and so on. The EAST classroom is equipped with more than 65 different software applications in a student-maintained network of servers, workstations, and peripherals.
Read more about the EAST Project, which is part of the U.S. Department of Education, National Technology in Education Plan. Find out how you could receive grant money for instituting this innovative program.
Then… Ask Yourself:
Could we do a better job of combining High Tech and High Touch?
www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=7060
Links:
EAST Initiative
Star City Schools
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