Published in the Current
One day early next week, Cape Elizabeth Middle School teachers who instruct seventh-grade students will receive their laptops.
Though the students will have to wait until the fall, teachers will get a jump on learning about these new educational tools.
Teachers already have been getting familiar with the laptops, taking trips to Lyman Moore Middle School in Portland to visit with students and teachers
using the laptops this school year.
Lyman Moore is a demonstration site for a state program which will put laptops into the hands of each seventh-grader in the state in the fall of 2002. In the fall of 2003, all eighth-graders will get one. To date, $25 million has
been set aside for the program, although the laptop fund has been tapped down by legislators to make up for shortfalls in other programs.
Eric Begonia, a science teacher at Lyman Moore, has been the Cape teachers’guide, along with several of his students, who have been enlisted to demonstrate their computers’ capabilities and their own school projects when visitors come to the school.
Begonia said the program is successful, and has opened up learning, so that students are teaching teachers about technology. He also said students are so enthusiastic that they show their parents what they’re learning when they take the laptops home.
Parents are required to sign a form each day students take laptops home. That policy is among those Cape teachers expect to adopt from Lyman Moore and adapt for use at CEMS.
Delaying retirement for program
Beverly Bisbee, the lead teacher for the laptop initiative among the CEMS seventh-grade teachers, is enthusiastic about the computers. So much so, in fact, that she put off her retirement to stay and incorporate laptops into her classroom and the classrooms of her colleagues.
Bisbee has been at this for some time. In 1986, when she was a teacher at Wilton Academy in Wilton, she got a grant to use computers in her writing classes. She was able to demonstrate that technology could narrow the gender gap in MEA scores.
The seventh-grade teachers already are using the middle school’s mobile computer lab, but want more time with the machines.
“The labs are overbooked. The labs are not sufficient for what we want to do,” Bisbee said. With computers, she said, “the teachable moments are just incredible.”
And with computers all the time? “This could revolutionize the way we teach and the way we learn,” Bisbee said.
All of the teachers involved in the program will have training sessions of at least two and in some cases five days during the summer, to help them become more familiar with the computers.
Policies and procedures are less of a worry after the visit to Lyman Moore, teachers said.
“I think Lyman Moore has a lot of the kinks worked out,” said teacher Matt Whaley. He is looking forward to having them in his classroom. “It’s going to be an incredible learning tool,” he said.
Teacher Joanne Paquette said laptops would help prevent students from losing notes or forgetting to bring notebooks to class, and can help her ensure all the students get vocabulary, for example. She expects she will send the list by email to the students, who will keep the message for reference and even use it, she said, during open-note tests.
Even so, the laptops may not be useful across the entire curriculum.
“In math I’m not quite sure,” Paquette said.
Brian Freccero teaches math and said many universities have web material on algebra and pre-algebra.
“We can use those to supplement the book,” he said.
He would create a list of links for students to visit, but said he wouldn’t expect to use them every day.
Paquette said she sees advantages aside from strict curricular applications.
“They’re always hounding us about what their grades are,” she said. She plans to have students enter their assignment grades into a spreadsheet and keep track themselves.
She added that slide shows on computer screens can help replace costly consumables, like poster board, saving teachers and schools money without sacrificing academics.
No replacement for basics
Students will still need to know how to do things without computers, the teachers said, and they expect to continue teaching those skills as well. “It’s the same learning taking place,” Paquette said.
Students also will need their basic skills, without computer assistance, in the near academic future, when they leave the middle school.
“When they go to high school they’re not going to have these,” said teacher Deb Casey.
Spanish teacher Susan Dana is concerned about technology overtaking learning. But even she uses computers for access to authentic Spanish-language materials and expects to continue to do so.
When that happens now, the class has to head down the hall and get set up on computers in the computer room, costing valuable class time.
Librarian Hayden Atwood expects to help the students do research using the computers, which come ready for Internet access, provided by a wireless link in the school building. They also have a multimedia encyclopedia installed, including audio and video files in addition to the text and photographs commonly found in book encyclopedias.
“For research it’s going to be wonderful,” Atwood said. He said teaching students about plagiarism and ethics, as well as how to evaluate Internet resources for truth and accuracy, will be primary tasks for him.
District technology coordinator Gary Lanoie also has visited Lyman Moore. “I was impressed by what I saw,” he said.
Initially, Lanoie had thought the school would not need carts in which to store the laptops and recharge their batteries, but after visiting Lyman Moore, he said he has changed his mind. He is investigating ways to buy or build enough carts to hold the school’s machines.
Lanoie also plans to set up an “iTeam,” about a dozen kids who will be resources for teachers and students who need help with their computers.
Schools statewide have reported that classrooms with laptops have better attendance rates, better discipline and more focused students.
Begonia said that Lyman Moore students take excellent care of the computers, and treat them with respect.
$25-million fund
The program is expected to cost the state $37.2 million over the next four years, and will outfit each seventh- and eighth-grade student and teacher with iBook laptops, made by Apple Computer. The contract between the state and Apple includes a hardware warranty and software support for each computer.
The state has provided initial funding of $25 million for the project, with interest on that money expected to make up the bulk of the remainder.
Gov. Angus King, who met with Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs to promote the program on Monday, said Apple has effectively contributed as much as $15 million in discounts for the project.
Some of the laptop money already has been used to purchase network equipment, laptops for demonstration sites including Lyman Moore and to buy laptops for teachers. The bulk of the money will be spent over the course of the contract, paid in monthly installments to Apple, based on the number of students and teachers receiving services, according to Department of Education spokesman Yellow Light Breen.
“I think it’s a wonderful program, if it will continue,” said Cape Superintendent Tom Forcella. If the funds will not be available to continue the program he said, a one-time expenditure would be better used to buy
mobile computer labs usable throughout the school district.
The governor originally earmarked $53 million for the program and legislators have cut it back to $25 million. The fund is often mentioned as a way to help bail out a projected $180 million state budget shortfall discovered by the state in April.
Thursday, June 13, 2002
Thursday, June 6, 2002
Cape Education Foundation to give $15,000
Published in the Current
Seeking some early success stories to boost fund-raising, the Cape Elizabeth Education Foundation is soliciting applications from school staff.
In October, the foundation expects to give teachers a total of $15,000 in project money.
Teachers have responded well to past approaches from the foundation, in which school staff were asked to describe “projects that would significantly enhance your curriculum, or allow you to go beyond the status quo if you had funding for the time or materials.”
“Forty-plus teachers responded very enthusiastically,” said Gail Rice, chair of the foundation’s grants committee. “They were (proposing) exactly what we were looking for.”
Some of those proposals included field trips to subject-related museums and public buildings in Portland and Boston, guest lecturers and workshops on specific subjects already addressed in the curriculum, books for classroom and library use, technological tools for specific curriculum-related uses, and artists-in-residence for painting, music, poetry and dance.
The grant applications were distributed to teachers late last week, and are due August 2. The application process entails writing a two-page project summary and determining a proposed budget.
“It is critical that we do make it easy” for teachers to apply, said Susan Spagnola, CEEF’s publicity coordinator.
Rice and Spagnola are not sure what applications will come in, and the application forms make clear that CEEF may choose not to fund, or to fund only partially, some grant requests, depending on the applicant pool.
To fund the projects and further work by the foundation, donors have pledged $21,000, including three donations of $5,000 each, Spagnola said. Some of the donors are on the foundation’s board, but others are members of the community who have no affiliation with the organization, she said.
“The momentum it’s gained in the last several months has been incredible,” Spagnola said.
In the fall, the foundation expects to launch a campaign to raise between $1 million and $2 million, which will make available between $50,000 and $100,000 in interest each year for future rounds of grants.
Seeking some early success stories to boost fund-raising, the Cape Elizabeth Education Foundation is soliciting applications from school staff.
In October, the foundation expects to give teachers a total of $15,000 in project money.
Teachers have responded well to past approaches from the foundation, in which school staff were asked to describe “projects that would significantly enhance your curriculum, or allow you to go beyond the status quo if you had funding for the time or materials.”
“Forty-plus teachers responded very enthusiastically,” said Gail Rice, chair of the foundation’s grants committee. “They were (proposing) exactly what we were looking for.”
Some of those proposals included field trips to subject-related museums and public buildings in Portland and Boston, guest lecturers and workshops on specific subjects already addressed in the curriculum, books for classroom and library use, technological tools for specific curriculum-related uses, and artists-in-residence for painting, music, poetry and dance.
The grant applications were distributed to teachers late last week, and are due August 2. The application process entails writing a two-page project summary and determining a proposed budget.
“It is critical that we do make it easy” for teachers to apply, said Susan Spagnola, CEEF’s publicity coordinator.
Rice and Spagnola are not sure what applications will come in, and the application forms make clear that CEEF may choose not to fund, or to fund only partially, some grant requests, depending on the applicant pool.
To fund the projects and further work by the foundation, donors have pledged $21,000, including three donations of $5,000 each, Spagnola said. Some of the donors are on the foundation’s board, but others are members of the community who have no affiliation with the organization, she said.
“The momentum it’s gained in the last several months has been incredible,” Spagnola said.
In the fall, the foundation expects to launch a campaign to raise between $1 million and $2 million, which will make available between $50,000 and $100,000 in interest each year for future rounds of grants.
Scouts find, mark veterans’ graves
Published in the Current
A group of Cape Elizabeth Boy Scouts found 30 new veterans’ graves in Portland’s Western Cemetery just before Memorial Day.
Led by Eagle candidate Carl Hagmann, the group of about 40 scouts and parents mapped and marked graves and paths in the cemetery, which has not been used for some time and is overgrown in parts.
“We basically mapped out the entire cemetery,” Hagmann said. The goal was to locate and mark graves of veterans, so they could be decorated on Memorial Day.
He had a list of 142 veterans’ graves, compiled as part of the cemetery’s planning project. But there were more.
“There were some other graves from (the War of) 1812 that weren’t on the list,” Hagmann said.
He and his fellow scouts ended up identifying 172 graves of veterans, 30 more than were marked on the cemetery’s master map, according to Peter Monro, the project coordinator for the Stewards of the Western Cemetery.
The 30 veterans were all in the War of 1812, Hagmann said, and were scattered throughout the cemetery.
Their remains had always been in the cemetery, but their graves had been unmarked for some time.
More recently, headstones were erected, but the locations of the graves were not recorded on the cemetery’s map, Hagmann said.
As part of the project, Hagmann stamped plot numbers on stainless steel medallions, allowing the gravesites to be permanently marked, Monro said.
The medallions, provided by the City of Portland, had a 10-inch stake on the back, so they can be embedded in the ground while still easily moved over, he said.
The scouts also placed stakes at the ends of paths through the cemetery. Some of the paths were overgrown and not clearly identifiable, Monro said. “(Hagmann’s) leadership was instrumental in getting this done,” he said.
A group of Cape Elizabeth Boy Scouts found 30 new veterans’ graves in Portland’s Western Cemetery just before Memorial Day.
Led by Eagle candidate Carl Hagmann, the group of about 40 scouts and parents mapped and marked graves and paths in the cemetery, which has not been used for some time and is overgrown in parts.
“We basically mapped out the entire cemetery,” Hagmann said. The goal was to locate and mark graves of veterans, so they could be decorated on Memorial Day.
He had a list of 142 veterans’ graves, compiled as part of the cemetery’s planning project. But there were more.
“There were some other graves from (the War of) 1812 that weren’t on the list,” Hagmann said.
He and his fellow scouts ended up identifying 172 graves of veterans, 30 more than were marked on the cemetery’s master map, according to Peter Monro, the project coordinator for the Stewards of the Western Cemetery.
The 30 veterans were all in the War of 1812, Hagmann said, and were scattered throughout the cemetery.
Their remains had always been in the cemetery, but their graves had been unmarked for some time.
More recently, headstones were erected, but the locations of the graves were not recorded on the cemetery’s map, Hagmann said.
As part of the project, Hagmann stamped plot numbers on stainless steel medallions, allowing the gravesites to be permanently marked, Monro said.
The medallions, provided by the City of Portland, had a 10-inch stake on the back, so they can be embedded in the ground while still easily moved over, he said.
The scouts also placed stakes at the ends of paths through the cemetery. Some of the paths were overgrown and not clearly identifiable, Monro said. “(Hagmann’s) leadership was instrumental in getting this done,” he said.
Vandals cut trees at high school
Published in the Current
Three maple trees between the Cape Elizabeth High School and the senior parking lot were cut down on the night of May 27 in an action school Principal Jeff Shedd called “ugly.”
“Somebody vandalized the school in a very ugly and meanspirited way,” he said.
The maples were planted in the late 1960s and 1970s, and were cut off a couple of feet above the ground by a handsaw, leaving stumps about 10 inches across.
The trees were left there. “I came in Tuesday morning and there were three trees on the ground,” Shedd said.
Town workers have since cut the stumps off level with the ground and removed the trees.
Shedd said school staffers were alarmed by the vandalism, and students were too.
“As a whole, the student body is as horrified about it as the adult population,” Shedd said.
Students are raising money, he said, to replace the trees, and the senior class may make the replacement their class gift.
Detective Paul Fenton said there are no suspects in the case, but said he continues to investigate it. He encouraged anyone with information on the incident to call police.
Several people told the Current one or more of the trees were in memory of people, but school officials said that was not true.
Plaques can be found at the base of two trees on the high school campus, said Superintendent Tom Forcella. No plaques are near the sites of the trees that were cut down.
Three maple trees between the Cape Elizabeth High School and the senior parking lot were cut down on the night of May 27 in an action school Principal Jeff Shedd called “ugly.”
“Somebody vandalized the school in a very ugly and meanspirited way,” he said.
The maples were planted in the late 1960s and 1970s, and were cut off a couple of feet above the ground by a handsaw, leaving stumps about 10 inches across.
The trees were left there. “I came in Tuesday morning and there were three trees on the ground,” Shedd said.
Town workers have since cut the stumps off level with the ground and removed the trees.
Shedd said school staffers were alarmed by the vandalism, and students were too.
“As a whole, the student body is as horrified about it as the adult population,” Shedd said.
Students are raising money, he said, to replace the trees, and the senior class may make the replacement their class gift.
Detective Paul Fenton said there are no suspects in the case, but said he continues to investigate it. He encouraged anyone with information on the incident to call police.
Several people told the Current one or more of the trees were in memory of people, but school officials said that was not true.
Plaques can be found at the base of two trees on the high school campus, said Superintendent Tom Forcella. No plaques are near the sites of the trees that were cut down.
Thursday, May 30, 2002
Land Trust tour shows off Cape Elizabeth gems
Published in the Current
On a rainy Saturday, 11 Cape residents went on a tour of the town’s green spaces. It wasn’t a day for walking the trails, but a driving tour visited the 500 acres of land the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust has preserved.
With another 500 of town-owned acres also conserved of the 9,300 acres of land in Cape Elizabeth, land trust director and tour leader Susy Kist said, “well over 10 percent of Cape Elizabeth is protected in perpetuity.”
The first parcel visited on the tour held earlier this month was the first land the trust preserved, a three-quarter acre plot on Reef Road to which the trust holds a conservation easement. The spot has a beautiful view of Trundy Point, which Kist said is private land.
Kist said the land trust does approach owners of “significant parcels” of land in town to ask if the land can be conserved, but emphasized that all of the conservation is according to the wishes of the landowner.
“We wish to be a resource for voluntary land protection,” Kist said.
Many of the protected parcels throughout town have trails on them, and other property, including Gull Crest, which is next to the high school, has trails in the planning stages.
Trails through Gull Crest, Kist said, could help school athletic teams who now have to take a bus to get to the fields located on the other side of the conservation land. The complication, she said, is that the land between the fields and the high school is very wet and may require boardwalks or other construction.
The land trust has worked with landowners to protect woodland and open land near farms, and is in discussions with Billy Jordan and his family to conserve their farmland as a viable agricultural resource, Kist said.
The Dyer-Hutchinson Farm on Sawyer Road is home to one of the oldest farmhouses in town, which is now undergoing a renovation according to national historic preservation standards. New owner Jay Cox also will expand the business his parents run on nearby land with a Christmas tree farm, Kist said.
Farmland, she said, is “ideally developable land,” as it is already fairly free of rocks and does not have much ledge. Preparing the land for building, she said, is simple, which places farmland or former farms in danger of being developed rather than conserved.
Much of Cape’s land remains open though, giving Kist some good prospects. “In Cape we still have the potential to conserve hundreds of acres of land,” she said.
One example is Cross Hill. That development is on 200 acres of land, but half will remain open and unbuilt, Kist said. Each phase of the development has a trail network that ties into the entire development and the town greenbelt.
Other areas of town have smaller parcels of land protected and trail networks running through them. Two of the larger pieces are Hobstone Woods and Robinson Woods.
Hobstone Woods is the land originally slated for the third phase of the Hobstone development. The trust bought that land for $75,000.
On a rainy Saturday, 11 Cape residents went on a tour of the town’s green spaces. It wasn’t a day for walking the trails, but a driving tour visited the 500 acres of land the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust has preserved.
With another 500 of town-owned acres also conserved of the 9,300 acres of land in Cape Elizabeth, land trust director and tour leader Susy Kist said, “well over 10 percent of Cape Elizabeth is protected in perpetuity.”
The first parcel visited on the tour held earlier this month was the first land the trust preserved, a three-quarter acre plot on Reef Road to which the trust holds a conservation easement. The spot has a beautiful view of Trundy Point, which Kist said is private land.
Kist said the land trust does approach owners of “significant parcels” of land in town to ask if the land can be conserved, but emphasized that all of the conservation is according to the wishes of the landowner.
“We wish to be a resource for voluntary land protection,” Kist said.
Many of the protected parcels throughout town have trails on them, and other property, including Gull Crest, which is next to the high school, has trails in the planning stages.
Trails through Gull Crest, Kist said, could help school athletic teams who now have to take a bus to get to the fields located on the other side of the conservation land. The complication, she said, is that the land between the fields and the high school is very wet and may require boardwalks or other construction.
The land trust has worked with landowners to protect woodland and open land near farms, and is in discussions with Billy Jordan and his family to conserve their farmland as a viable agricultural resource, Kist said.
The Dyer-Hutchinson Farm on Sawyer Road is home to one of the oldest farmhouses in town, which is now undergoing a renovation according to national historic preservation standards. New owner Jay Cox also will expand the business his parents run on nearby land with a Christmas tree farm, Kist said.
Farmland, she said, is “ideally developable land,” as it is already fairly free of rocks and does not have much ledge. Preparing the land for building, she said, is simple, which places farmland or former farms in danger of being developed rather than conserved.
Much of Cape’s land remains open though, giving Kist some good prospects. “In Cape we still have the potential to conserve hundreds of acres of land,” she said.
One example is Cross Hill. That development is on 200 acres of land, but half will remain open and unbuilt, Kist said. Each phase of the development has a trail network that ties into the entire development and the town greenbelt.
Other areas of town have smaller parcels of land protected and trail networks running through them. Two of the larger pieces are Hobstone Woods and Robinson Woods.
Hobstone Woods is the land originally slated for the third phase of the Hobstone development. The trust bought that land for $75,000.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)