Alexandria City Public Schools

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Teacher Testimonials

"Laptops help bring primary sources from throughout history right to the students fingertips. This is what I primarily use the laptops for. From those primary sources, students learn about the time period from those who lived through it themselves. These sources serve as a spark for other classroom activities such as debates and discussions. They have also been effective tools in having students visit online exhibits of some museums such as the American History Museum's exhibit on the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Later this year, the students will use their laptops to develop a multi-media group project/presentation on monuments in DC. Having the laptops makes life so much easier. Gone are the days of having to sign up weeks in advance for a 45-minute block in the one computer lab the school had for 2000 students."

Hunter Hammond, U.S. History teacher
T.C. Williams High School

"I use the laptop to organize my thoughts, lesson plans and student activities. I use Blackboard to post what we are doing so that both parents and students can see what is being covered. I use the laptop to present material for class work. My students are reluctant learners and the computer makes it easier for them to write, to edit, and to submit work to me. I have them attach work to an email so that I can access it from home without having to carry the papers around. If I lose the hardcopy (I'm a Digital Immigrant and still need to pore over a hardcopy), I have the original in my email student file. They use the laptop to study and review via power points they make. Their reading log is a blog journal. This just touches the surface..."

Jill Crispino, Communications Skills teacher
T.C. Williams High School

"My lessons are alive with color, music and animation. The laptop provides my students with different levels of instruction from remedial to advanced for each topic I present. I believe the what we teach our students about technology and it's uses in the workplace transends any subject area we teach. We are providing them with job skills that will follow them to any career, whether or not they go to college. The older generation in today's workplace is retiring, some of them in order to avoid learning new technologies, and our students are poised and ready to take their places."

Myron Hanke, Physics teacher
T.C. Williams High School

"I find the laptops valuable for a variety of reasons. I just finished an activity with my honors class where they gathered real time data (water temperatures and locations) from buoys and ships, located in the Atlantic Ocean and then they looked at satellite pictures that showed the water temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean. They used all of this information to plot the location of the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean. They could then look at past data to see how the location of the Gulf Stream changes throughout the year. My honors class has also done some activities using GIS maps dealing with resources of VA which have been really interesting. There is no way to do these types of activities without the use of a computer. This technology is and continues to become more important in the study of Earth Science."

"I also have all of my classes do online labs on the laptops. They have been able to locate the epicenter of an earthquake and find the discharge from rivers right here in the classroom. I also think that they are extremely useful as a research tool in class. I have picked out useful web sites on specific topics and had them answer questions or complete an activity using the web sites. They also are good for testing their knowledge on certain topics. I have them make PowerPoint presentations periodically reviewing the major concepts at the end of the unit. I have done labs in class where they have to plot all of the data in Excel and then make graphs using Excel and turn it all into me electronically. I have also used Inspiration with them to make concept maps to review."

"There are also some really good sites that the students can use to review for the SOL test. These sites have old SOL test questions or other review questions similar to the SOL test questions. The students can take the test online and get immediate feedback telling them how they did."

Lisa Coughlin, Earth Science teacher
T.C. Williams High School

Laptops have served to bring science to life and have given students multiple opportunities to interact with English vocabulary in my ESL Introduction to Science class. ESL students benefit from working with language and content through a variety of modalities, and laptops provide resources that students would otherwise not have. Fuzzy concepts are clarified and correctly reinforced by watching a clip from United Streaming Videos or Brainpop.com. Students can understand planetary rotation by pulling up an instant video that illustrates the concept. English vocabulary is more likely to become cemented by manipulating scientific words through the Inspiration program. Laptops have given students immediate and direct access to these resources, as well as a host of others, which have greatly enhanced my classroom instruction.

Susannah Courand, ESL Teacher/Department Chair
T.C. Williams High School

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DID YOU KNOW?

Two ACPS "modified calendar" schools - Mount Vernon Community School and Samuel W. Tucker Elementary School - offer three intersessions throughout the school year, featuring a wide selection of both remedial and special-interest classes.