MaSSSoftech

The seven graduates of the inaugural year of Richmond County Schools Technology Leadership Institute have completed their summer internship course, but will continue to share their skills throughout the year.

For Grady Lorenzo, in particular, this program offered the chance to blossom and develop in a more task-oriented setting than the traditional classroom.

“I think that usually when teachers try to teach a kid how to use a computer, they usually teach minute things, like ‘If you want to make a spreadsheet go to this program,’” he said. “Or, ‘if you’re working with a spreadsheet, and you want to change the value in one of the cells, just type in this formula.’ They don’t tell you why the formula works, or how it works.”

He compared most classroom computer education to using a Microsoft Wizard, without knowing why the wizard directs you to make an action.

“Here, I kind of just came in and started messing with it,” he continued. “If you just mess around with it, pretty soon you’ll learn everything there is to know about a program.”

He is now messing around with it a lot, and has set up a dual-tower and monitor design system in his bedroom where he’s creating, among other interactive graphics, a rotating, layer-peeling anatomically-correct human brain.

“He’s in Geek City,” his mother Melinda Tincher said. “He loves it.”

She agreed this type of learning environment mimicked the workplace and was better suited for him.

“Everyone has different learning styles, and he’s more of a visual learner,” she said. “I don’t really see college in his future, but I think this is great. It not only broadens his educational choices, but this is something he could actually take on as a career.

When the Fort Bragg Base Realignment and Closure Regional Task Force shared the new technology with the school systems and community colleges in its area, the charge was to incorporate it into classroom instruction.

Richmond County Schools Information Technology Director Jeff Epps said the potential for the equipment was unquestionable, but there was very little material to translate into instructional tools.

To fill that gap, the decision was made to have students design the materials in a month-long summer internship. Having graduated from the course, they will continue to update and demonstrate the materials as they are implemented in the district’s geometry classes in the upcoming school year.

RCS Information Technology Director Jeff Epps said the first day they came in he taught them everything he knew about the new technology, then the students began teaching him.

“We had a lot of hurdles to overcome with this type of cutting-edge technology we’d never used before,” he said. “But, they grasped this so quickly that pretty much after the first day the roles were literally reversed, and I became the student. They had literally surpassed me by day two.”

This internship is a unique program. The only other educational institution in the region to tackle this subject has been Fayetteville Tech, which offers a programming course.

After a field trip to that campus, at least five of the students expressed an interest in taking that course.

“Here at Richmond County Schools, we have a mission to help our students become globally competitive, and this is definitely a step in that direction,” Epps said. “Through this program, they’re building a portfolio that is going to be used in a real world scenario by the geometry teachers at the high school.

The hope is that after participating in this internship, and continuing to work with this program throughout the year, these students will be prepared to go out and enter the workplace immediately after high school in a 21st Century field that will be in high demand.”

Miles Pattan had aspirations of becoming a computer engineer even before enrolling in this program. Though he’s worked with design for some time, he said the internship has been an eye-opening experience for him and has fed his ambition.

“The main thing about tutorials, like you would typically use to learn software, is that they have certain steps, but with this - we came in and just played around with it and learned things,” he said. “It was basically trial and error, and that’s a better way to learn for me.”

Pattan and Monroe WIlliams were instrumental in designing one of the program’s first major breakthroughs - the man with the soda can. It’s a scene where a man shakes a soda can, opens it and the soda sprays everywhere.

This is important because it was the class’s first real glimpse of what could be done with the technology, Epps said.

“Everybody has their own strengths and weaknesses, and everybody brings different interests to the table,” Epps said. “One thing we really want to do through this program is help students establish their individual visions for the potential of this technology.”

For WIlliams, who is also a football player, the “Soda Can” graphic helped to crystallize his vision of the possibilities of this technology’s use.

“One of the big things that hit me was when Mr. Epps was talking about how football teams could take it, and make model players,” he said. “Me being a football player, I thought that would be neat, if I could see the players move around rather than just draw the X’s and O’s on a board. That was my first little glimpse of what could be possible.”

Cassie Russell is an aspiring artist who recently won an award for a design she developed that became the RCS’s new district logo. She, too, could see this technology being utilized in her individual discipline and interest.

“You could really take your art to a whole other level using this,” she said. “Instead of just drawing on a piece of paper, you can make it come to life when people view your work. It’s just really cool to be able to do that.”

One extrapolation she made - a virtual gallery.

“It would be really neat if colleges could view your work in an online gallery using this,” she said.

As the school year begins, these students will work with the geometry teachers to help them learn how to use this program, and Epps said other applications are already in the works.

“Ultimately, we want this to be a part of every classroom,” he said. “We’re already developing uses for this in biology, auto mechanics and other courses, and helping these students to be able to compete in the new technological workplace.”

Interested?

Anyone who’d like to get updates and view samples of the work of the RCS Technology Leadership Institute can check out their Twitter page at www.twitter.com/i3drcs.