Mon. County

It is wonderful to be a part of this group that has been given the opportunity to use netbooks with our students! My students, middle school in Monongalia County, have used the netbooks to research and work on our community problem solving problem of helping others living in countries less fortunate than ours. We have used the website http://www.kiva.org/ to see the requests of people living around the world. We wrote and recieved a grant from United Way to sponsor several of these requests, and can check frequently to see if our recipients are paying back their loans. In addition, we are using http://www.freerice.org/ to donate rice to these countries in need. We are currently doing a fundraiser at our school to raise the funds to donate a goat and a flock of chicks to these countries through the site, http://www.heifers.com/ ,to provide milk and eggs.

Recently Vicky visited our classroom and the students were using their netbooks to research for their President presentations in preparation for our Academic Games tournament. Students were given a scenario in which they worked for a public relations firm, and a president came to their firm to be represented. The students needed to prepare a presentation for their president client that included past accomplishments and ways for viewers to remember their president. Presentations included jingles, songs, and posters, as well as factual information. What a fun way to learn!

Wayne County

We enjoyed our visit from Vicki M. today. Our students were creating presentations using www.prezi.com. Prezi is a great way to advance our students from the standard PowerPoint presentations. While PowerPoints are great, Prezi's give our students complete control over their presentations. There are no templates, or guidelines. Creativity is our friend! The students used their netbooks and are creating their presentations to put on our Travel page located on our website. They will document places we have been and include facts about each. So far, they look great. We are hoping the students can load them in 2 weeks. We need the snow to stay away to meet our deadline so cross your fingers!