The Ferryway School held a movie premiere today, complete with red carpet, paparazzi, and even a few Oscars.  Grade four and five students from last year were honored by their teachers with class Oscars for best learning in a real life documentary.  This was the first time that students had the opportunity to watch Turning on Technology filmed by the George Lucas Educational Foundation (GLEF) earlier this spring.  The Lucas Foundation promotes excellence in teaching that demonstrates effective technology use on their public website, Edutopia.  A streaming version of the movie can be watched directly from the Edutopia website.

Principal Devito welcomed students and teachers to the premiere by emphasizing how unique it is that the Ferryway School had been recognized by the Lucas foundation.  Assistant Superintendent, Dr. Sullivan, congratulated students on their hard work, mentioning that she was very impressed with their knowledge during last year’s annual Ferryway School technology showcase.

The lights dimmed and students watched their learning projected onto the auditorium’s large screen.  Claps and cheers were heard throughout the premiere as students and their teachers appeared on screen.  After the movie, Mr. Simpson, showed a five minute photo slide show of pictures taken during the two day movie shoot.  Then, Mrs. Briatico stepped to the podium to award honorary Oscars to representatives of each of the classes.   Grade four teachers, Mrs. Urban and Ms. Shelton awarded fifth graders who completed the last year’s biome project as fourth graders, oscars for best wild life documentary.  Retired Malden teacher, Pat Fish, who was the guiding force for the Saugus Iron Works curriculum, was pleased to accept her Oscar for best web screen play for The Saugus Iron Works Great Adventure.

What movie premiere would be complete without media coverage?  A reporter from the Malden Evening News will write a feature story for next week’s paper.  Congratulations Ferryway!!!

To read more about the Lucas foundation movie, visit the Saugus Iron Works blog.

The first meeting of the Ferryway School Technology Leadership Team (FTLT) was held today. The FTLT’s goal is to provide leadership on how best to integrate technology into curriculum instruction. The team will meet on a regular basis to implement a technology integration plan focused on grades 3-6. A significant part of the plan is to build teacher’s knowledge and understanding of Web 2.0 classroom strategies. Principal, Tom DeVito, welcomes the following teachers:

• Kate Ambrose – Grade 3
• Sara Shelton – Grade 4
• Diane Urban – Grade 4
• Margaret Briatico – Grade 5
• Robin Desantis – Grade 6
• Scott Richmond – K-4 Computers

Technology Specialist, Robert Simpson, presented these agenda items:

1. Ferryway early release day, September 10, 2008 debrief
2. Edutopia.org George Lucas Educational Foundation (GLEF) update
   a. Video and article used to train today’s preservice teachers.
3. ISTE Materials
   a. NETS-S Poster (display in all classrooms grades 3-6, computer labs, technology lab, art & music rooms)
   b. Web 2.0
   c. NETS-T booklet
4. Ferryway Technology Integration Action Plan
   a. What grade level goals do you have Fall > Winter > Spring
5. Teacher Technology baseline survey and Student Tech Survey
   a. Ferryway SurveyMonkey account
6. EduBlogs [Example http://neotechlearning.edublogs.org ]
   a. Each leader needs an account. One post per month.
7. Digital Media Workshops
   a. Set schedule and topic discussion [See Digital Media Workshop tab above]
8. Set our meeting schedule, Mondays.

Our first early release day included a thirty minute overview of the new technology integration initiative presented by Robert Simpson.  Principal, Tom Devito secured funding for Simpson to help develop a Ferryway school-wide technology integration plan.  An important aspect of the orientation session was to share ideas for transforming instruction to include what is know as Web 2.0.  Web 2.0 includes any online tool that enables students and teachers to create and communicate using the web.  Blogs, wikis, and podcasts are tremendously popular examples of Web 2.0 in action.   Streaming video is of course another extremely popular form of Web 2.0, especially considering youtube. In a tribute to our recognition by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, teachers viewed a clip from the viral Ryan vs. Dorkman video.  Sorry, the light sabers were not real!  The video underscores that technologies such as digital video cameras and special effects software can be harnessed by young people to create professional quality media.

Teachers actively responded to questions embedded in the presentation through the Qwizdom student response system.  Each teacher used a remote control to make selections that were then sent wirelessly for tabulation.  About 90% of Ferryway teachers have never used a response system.  The right-hand image shows that 52% of teachers correctly thought that Ferryway students reported only used a computer once per week last school year.  The Ferryway school will have a total of three systems to use this year.  Qwizdom will be used to make classroom instruction more interactive and improve real-time assessment.  Teachers liked the idea that every student could have their response recorded and then the data could be shared for whole class discussion.

Another exciting announcement was the launch of the Ferryway 2.0 on-demand learning site.  Ferryway 2.0 uses Adobe’s Connect Pro system for uploading and sharing digital media content.  You can view an interactive Flash version of the orientation presentation.  Some benefits of the on-demand system are that teachers are able to receive training any time and they can also develop interactive student lessons.