TEACHING IN THEIR LANGUAGE

CARTHAGE — Teachers and administrators in the Carthage Central School District have continued the district's emphasis on integrating technology in the classroom this year with plenty of new and improved devices and software.

"The Board of Education knows and understands the value of technology," said Ramona Dent, district director of computer technology. "There are computers in each classroom, SMART boards and projectors in each building and a wide variety of software applications."

SMART boards are interactive white boards that allow teachers to display presentations, lesson plans or Web sites, among other things, on a board in front of the class. Several districts in the north country have the boards, and many are trying to find ways to purchase more.

"We want to engage our students through interactive learning," she said. "The students that we are teaching right now are digital natives. Their cell phones are not foreign — it's their language. We need to be able to speak their language and teach them through it. Once they leave here, they are bombarded by technology on a personal level and in the job force. If we don't offer this to them while they're here, we aren't doing our jobs as educators."

Children begin to learn to use keyboards in third grade, Mrs. Dent said. They are taught Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel, Office and Word. In fifth grade, pupils get more computer training.

Each teacher in the district has an e-mail address connected to the district's home page and many teachers have Web pages on the site.

"That's more of school-to-home connection," she said. "They can post assignments, homework and other information about the class. Parents can keep track of their student's progress and can e-mail with the teacher. That's especially important if the student's parent is deployed or out of the area."

The district also has partnered with Rochester Institute of Technology for about 10 years to offer students Project Lead the Way.

The engineering program starts in ninth grade for students who like math and who may be considering a career in any kind of engineering.

"Students in Project Lead the Way have the opportunity to earn up to 16 credit hours of college credit at a very reduced price," said Richard R. Lajoie, technology coordinator and teacher. "There is a ton of technology used in the courses."

The program starts off broad in ninth grade and then gets harder and more specific to the different types of engineering.

"We teach them mechanical engineering, digital, electronic engineering and civil engineering," Mr. Lajoie said. "They get first-hand experience as to what engineering's all about."

In the 2008 graduating class, Mr. Lajoie said, the program sent 10 students to strong engineering universities such as Clarkson University, SUNY Canton and RIT.

Just last year, one of the first students in the program graduated from Clarkson with an engineering degree, he said.

The district has one of the only Geographic Information Systems classes in the state. This is a growing field that maps various information in a given region, including soil information, streets, recreation areas, trails and demographic information.

The new one-year class at the high school allows successful students to earn three college credits.

The students have mapped recreational areas for municipalities that documented where the trails are, their conditions and the terrain. They made a set of maps and presented it to the River Area Council of Governments so it could plan use of the trails.

The class also has taken readings of fire hydrants. The students color-coded the maps based on where the hydrants are and how big they are.

"They are now laminated and in all of the area's emergency response vehicles," said Peter Walsemann, the GIS teacher, physics teacher and science coordinator in grades six through 12. "Now they have an idea of where the hydrant is and how big it is, so they know how much water they hold."

Mr. Walsemann said this is very popular technology throughout the world.

"It will set the students up with the skill set to be able to look at things spatially," he said, "which we don't do a good job in high school classes otherwise. I hope these students realize this technology is out there and that it's available for them and they can use it for a variety of reasons."

The class also is working with Google Earth and municipalities to map roads, businesses, buildings and churches for the Web site.

The district has incorporated a weather station into its high school classes this year.

Over the summer, the Davis Advantage Pro 2+ was installed in the science department.

"It gives us much more accurate weather readings and we're able to manipulate the data and save it," said Zach J. Miller, who is one of the three earth science teachers running the weather center. "We have all the information displayed right here in the science department so that all of the kids can see the current weather conditions."

The station takes recordings of temperature, dew point, humidity, air pressure, rainfall and wind speed and direction.

When the students learn about weather in their classes, Mr. Miller said, they will be able to access the data to learn about how the conditions and past weather affect where they live.

"It gives them that local connection," he said. "It gives them first-hand knowledge that they can watch what's really happening right here."

Anyone can access the district's weather readings on www.weatherunderground.com.