By Bridget McCrea

02/16/11

Cornwall-Lebanon School District in Lebanon, PA, had been using a media presentation capture system for three years before making the move into lecture capture in 2010. "We were using CourseCast district-wide for everything but lecture capture," said Jason Murray, technology coordinator for the district, referring to Panopto's media capture solution.

What Is Lecture Capture?
Lecture capture is a fairly vibrant topic in education right now, though mainly in colleges and universities at the moment. In K-12, adoption has been somewhat slower, but it's growing as teachers and education leaders have begun looking for solutions to help reinforce what students are being taught in the classroom. (An informal poll by THE Journal in November showed that half of K-12 schools are not equipped at all for lecture capture. Of the remainder of the respondents, more than half indicated that just 1 percent to 25 percent of their classrooms have some kind of lecture capture capability.)

Visit THE Journal to continue reading

Apps in the Classroom

By D.C. Denison

Last fall, Rebecca Allen distributed brand-new Apple iPad tablet computers instead of books to her fourth-grade class at the Rich Acres Elementary School in Martinsville, Va. The students went wild. “It was like Christmas in October,’’ the teacher said.

“It was fun watching the kids jump right in,’’ Allen added. “They are so used to technology, they took to them right away.’’

In recent weeks, Rosemount High School social studies teacher Tom Scott has crisscrossed the Galapagos Islands in a tiny motor boat. He's dived among sea turtles and reef sharks, and walked the bustling streets of the city of Puerto Ayora.

Meanwhile, his students back in Minnesota followed his every move and tackled tough questions about politics and environment.

Welcoming Mobile Technology

By Bridget McCrea

During a nine-week period last school year, teachers and administrators at Port Clinton High School reported more than 600 discipline issues related to technology and the use of cell phones on campus. "That's a huge number, considering that our total enrollment is only 590," said Ralph Moore, principal at the Port Clinton, OH, school. "And that number doesn't even include the students that we didn't catch."

Moore, who in previous administrative positions may have taken measures to ban the devices that were causing many of the issues, took a different stance this time. Working with the school's tech-savvy assistant principal, he sat down and tried to come up with a solution that would allow technology on campus while also reducing the high number of violations that students were racking up.

Teachers got involved with the problem-solving exercise, said Moore, who turned to the instructors for their input on how to integrate technology without disrupting classroom and learning time. Administrators also gathered input from the student body, which was given the heads up about a new wireless system on campus and the rules and policies that its users would be required to follow.

Visit THE Journal to read more about the surprising results of lifting the ban on electronic devices.