Betterment hears facts about One-to-One

Rachel Mendell — Staff

Danielle Schieber, stand­ing left, and Gabe Makeever, present the new One-to-One pilot pro­gram with Supt. Kathy Jen­ney. Schiebre and Makeever are two of the 145 sev­enth graders involved in the pro­gram. (Inquirer photo/Rachel Mendell)

Super­in­ten­dent Kathy Jen­ney, along with the help of two 7th grade stu­dents, pre­sented the One-to-One project to the Galion Area Bet­ter­ment Com­mis­sion dur­ing their April meeting.

Stu­dents Gabe Makeever and Danielle Schieber told the mem­bers of Bet­ter­ment how they use their lap­tops in school and how it has helped them in their classes.

In a pilot pro­gram, 75 high school stu­dents, 25 fifth grade stu­dents and all 145 sev­enth graders were given lap­tops (Mac­Book and Mac­Book Air) to use in school and at home to aid them in their stud­ies. The pilot has been going on for three weeks with many pos­i­tive results, said Jen­ney. With school test­ing, GED test­ing and taxes all being com­pleted online, stu­dents need to be able to use this tool.

Lap­tops are used for cus­tomiz­ing edu­ca­tion plans, for hand­ing in home­work elec­tron­i­cally, for work­ing together in group projects and for self-study. Jen­ney said with lap­tops, edu­ca­tion can hap­pen even on Snow Days and dur­ing Sum­mer Break.

Jen­ney also said that schools are mov­ing toward Project Based Learn­ing. Instead of mem­o­riz­ing a lot of facts, facts are accu­mu­lated and used to solve new prob­lems. Stu­dents will be tak­ing on projects in a future four-day inten­sive study.

Jen­ney said teach­ers were trained on the lap­tops first, before the project began with the stu­dents. Teach­ers also vis­ited schools that already had the One-to-One pro­gram in place such as San­dusky Perkins and Ver­mil­lion. They saw that stu­dents were more moti­vated and dis­tricts were see­ing lower absenteeism.

The One-to-One pilot pro­gram is funded with a vari­ety of sources includ­ing Title I funds, IDEA Funds, Rural School Grant funds, Per­ma­nent Improve­ment Funds and Race to the Top funds.

Par­ents are on-board with the pro­gram as teach­ers and par­ents work together to cre­ate the lim­i­ta­tions needed for each stu­dent. The lap­tops will also help with “blended learn­ing” which is a com­bi­na­tion of on-site edu­ca­tion, inde­pen­dent study and home-based work. Jen­ney said with all stu­dents and teach­ers con­nected it is easy to see how much work each stu­dent is doing in group projects as well.

Jen­ney said the lap­tops and new tech­nol­ogy will enable dis­trict schools to work together in offer­ing other classes such as Ger­man III and IV and expand course offerings.

Gabe Makeever noted with the lap­tops there is “more projects and less home­work.” Danielle Schieber com­mented on the sticky notes (which keep track of assign­ments), and i-Movies, which are used in class to present projects. In the sev­enth grade, stu­dents are given a rubric that lists what things must be accom­plished to achieve an A. Then a movie is cre­ated using all the parts of the project allow­ing stu­dents to be more creative.

Jen­ney said so far there have been no major prob­lems. “The sev­enth grade kids have been incred­i­bly respon­si­ble.” She went on to say that the staff has learned they have a greater oblig­a­tion to teach stu­dents how to be safe on sites such as Face­book, Youtube and Google Plus, instead of just lock­ing those sites down.

Jen­ney invited Bet­ter­ment to the May 2 tech­nol­ogy night where the stu­dents will show off what they have learned.

In other Bet­ter­ment busi­ness, Gene Toy reported the project of the upgrade of the waste­water treat­ment plant has begun. Soon there will be another project started on State Route 61 – Ohio Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion will begin util­ity upgrades and replace the bridge by JenCor.

Doug Weise­nauer reported that the Power Cit­ing Board ruled in favor of the wind farm project and gave it the go-ahead. He also reported leg­is­la­tion in the works for deep well drilling, frack­ing, and how cit­i­zens will ben­e­fit from it. When asked if there is drilling in Craw­ford County, Weise­nauer said not yet, but there are leases in place. He com­mented that tech­nol­ogy is mov­ing so fast, that many meth­ods used in drilling are now outdated.

The county is con­sid­er­ing pulling out the recy­cling trail­ers at East Park due to the mess left over the week­ends. He said the prob­lem is that the trailer is too small and there is no one to police it on the weekend.

Jerry Morasko said the remod­el­ing of the car­diac rehab is going well, which will now be in the front of the hos­pi­tal. The park­ing lot rebuild should be done in three or four weeks and fix the prob­lem was with hos­pi­tal access on to Port­land Way. When fin­ished, the entrance will take dri­vers in a loop and traf­fic should flow better.

Bar­bara Abra­ham said this was her last Bet­ter­ment meet­ing rep­re­sent­ing the hos­pi­tal aux­il­iary. Patty Rice Groth will be the new pres­i­dent. It was a pro­duc­tive year, said Abra­ham. The Aux­il­iary was able to pur­chase two patient mon­i­tors, another machine that five health providers will use and two chest vests for patients hav­ing breath­ing prob­lems. They were also able to pur­chase a new chair for the ultra­sound room. In all the hos­pi­tal aux­il­iary raised $40,000 for the hospital’s needs.

Elaine Hot­ten­roth announced the high school musi­cal played to a sold out crowd all three per­for­mances. “The kids loved being in the facil­ity (Galion Com­mu­nity Threatre),” said Hot­ten­roth. Kids ran the equip­ment and were excited to be there. Hot­ten­roth added they also kept the The­atre clean.

Bet­ter­ment was reminded of the Good Fri­day Ser­vice at 7 p.m. at the The­atre Fri­day, April 6. Try­outs for the Theatre’s June pro­duc­tion of “1776” will be April 14 and 15.

Dr. Steven Novack, reported the flu sea­son was done, but there is a cold sea­son still hang­ing on. The Health Depart­ment is remod­el­ing. Novack reminded Bet­ter­ment of the Town Hall Meet­ing April 19.

Amber Wert­man invited Bet­ter­ment to the Easter Egg Hunt at the Galion His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety April 7 at 10 a.m. She said plans for the April 22 Ceme­tery Walk are com­ing together nicely with every­one work­ing together.

Don Trigg reminded Bet­ter­ment of the National Day of Prayer being cel­e­brated at the Heise Park memo­r­ial May 3. In case of rain, the prayer will move to Galion Alliance Church.

Vicki Eck­en­rod announced the annual poetry con­test this month cel­e­brat­ing National Poetry Month. Then next week is National Library Week and the Galion Library is cel­e­brat­ing with a café Mon­day, April 9 from 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. She reminded every­one to get out their cam­eras and take pho­tos of let­ters found around Galion for the library’s A-Z Pho­tog­ra­phy Con­test. On April 21, the Mor­row County Sher­iff will offer a pre­sen­ta­tion of their K-9 pro­gram. On April 26, the library will have the Red Car­pet Pre­mier of the Teen Trailer Contest.

Jen­ney said on Wednes­day, April 4, at 3:45 p.m. there will be a meet­ing of the New Booster Bingo. On Sat­ur­day, April 14, the school will offer an elec­tronic recy­cling day at the high school from 9 a.m. – noon.

Den­nis Crim reported Rotary start­ing plans for the Fourth of July week­end. The Inde­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tion will be on July 1st. Rotary is offer­ing asso­ciate mem­ber­ships – no dues required.

Jean Plack reminded Bet­ter­ment of the Home­Care Mat­ters Celebrity Din­ner at William Craw­ford School.

Laura Smith of United Way announced a Friends and Fam­ily Night April 24 at Cross­roads Can­dles. United Way had a suc­cess­ful cook-out at Covert and is seek­ing ways to get into other businesses.

Jill Lee of Com­mu­nity Action reported a suc­cess­ful Farmer’s Mar­ket recently with 113 fam­i­lies served in 35 min­utes. This time the vol­un­teers handed out recipes with the produce.

Bet­ter­ment was reminded of the Cham­ber Break­fast April 10 at 7:30 a.m. at the Free Methodist Chris­t­ian Life Cen­ter on Port­land Way North.

Mem­bers of the Bet­ter­ment Com­mis­sion are Joe Kleinknecht — Cham­ber of Com­merce, Dave Williamson — Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment, Gene Toy — City of Galion, Terry Grib­ble — Com­mu­nity Cen­ter YMCA, Doug Weise­nauer – Craw­ford County, Jerry Morasko – Galion Com­mu­nity Hos­pi­tal, Bar­bara Abra­ham – Galion Hos­pi­tal Aux­il­iary, Elaine Hot­ten­roth – Galion Com­mu­nity The­atre, Inc., Dr. Stephen Novack – Galion Health Depart­ment, Amber Wert­man – Galion His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety, Pas­tor Don Trigg – Galion Min­is­te­r­ial Asso­ci­a­tion, Vicki Eck­en­rod – Galion Pub­lic Library/Kiwanis, Kathy Jen­ney – Galion Pub­lic Schools, Den­nis Crim – Galion Rotary, Jean Plack – Golden Age Cen­ter, Glenn Cheesman — Polk Town­ship, Brian Treisch – Galion Alumni/Alumni Band, Laura Smith – United Way, Jill Lee – Galion Com­mu­nity Action.

The next meet­ing of the Galion Area Bet­ter­ment Com­mis­sion will be Mon­day, May 7 at noon in the Galion Com­mu­nity Hos­pi­tal cafeteria.

Posted by Rachel Mendell on Apr 4 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.