Laurel Mountain Technology

Laurel Mountain Elementary has rolled out Microsoft’s new Mouse Mischief in select classrooms.

This new program integrates technology into the curriculum by allowing teachers to create interactive PowerPoint presentations.

Students are able to collaborate on the same screen via wireless mice!

Learn more here.

We have added a high powered camera to our inventory of photography equipment.  Here are just a few of the uses for our new camera:

• Take pictures of butterflies, dragonflies, leaves, wildflowers, and grasses
• Take pictures of field plots in the preserve and arrange pictures chronologically to note change over time.

We have added iPod Nanos in several classrooms.  The possibilities are endless and we have only just started discovering the variety of uses for the iPod in classrooms.

• Download multiplication songs to help students learn facts through song.
• Download stories for student to take home and listen as the read the book
• Store videos on the iPod and stream the video through the projector to share with the class.  They use the iPod as a storage device to have videos ready to roll instead of searching for them and waiting for them to download.

Students have new ways to get interactive in their learning at Laurel Mountain Elementary!

Thanks to the generous funding of our PTA, we have rolled out the first Smart Podium.  This monitor-sized touch screen device allows the user’s computer work to be projected for everyone to see.  Students can write, navigate websites, solve problems, and more!  It is a simple, intuitive device that kids can walk right up to and be comfortable using it.

We have also rolled out three wireless Smart Slates for our teachers that enable them to use their computer remotely while being free to move about the room.  This gives teachers increased flexibility when planning lessons.  The slates work with their computer and our new ceiling mount projectors so that the kids can view what is going on via the large projector screen.

A big THANK YOU to our wonderful PTA for making this new technology a reality at Laurel Mountain Elementary!

Laurel Mountain Elementary offers our students Enrichment Clusters which provide the opportunity to pursue a personal interest. They do so in a small group setting and produce collaborative projects to explore real world applications of the knowledge they are learning in school. Enrichment clusters are non-graded groups of students who share common interests and who come together once a week to explore these interests during a 6-8 week time frame once a year. One of these groups is “Spectacular Space”, and the with the help of the facilitators, Deseree Deatherage and Roopa Mucherla, students created a Wikispace page to share what they have learned about planets and the solar system.

Visit the Laurel Mountain Elementary website HERE.