St. Albans City School Celebrates Historic Day

The countdown towards a historic event in our country’s history created quite a buzz at St. Albans City School. In an age where technology brings you instant access to view world events, expectations ran high that students and staff would not only have the opportunity to view the first African American be sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, but also participate in some of the events that surrounded the day.

While classroom teachers prepared their students with lessons on history, government and the Constitution, the school librarians and the technology staff teamed up to make sure that everyone had a place to gather and watch the Inaugural Events.

Mr. Lyndes, the school network administrator, estimated the amount of Internet bandwidth that would be required for each computer to stream the video from the many available websites, then calculated how many computers the school’s Internet connectivity could successfully handle.

Ms. DeLaBruere, the school educational technology specialist, set up locations with computers, speakers, screens and projectors for groups to gather and view the event using the school’s Internet system in the gym, cafeteria, and two classrooms.

Librarians, Ms.Wade and Ms. Lang, tested the school’s cable system and located enough televisions and live cable connections to set up certain classrooms to act as hosts viewing stations. They also worked with Mr. Pelkey to turn the center of the school from a library to a large group viewing center, equipped extra chairs, patriotic decorations and a large projector screen displaying a local cable feed of the Inauguration activities.

Even the cafeteria staff contributed by supervising extra equipment in the midst of a busy lunchroom to allow students scheduled for lunch to watch the President take the oath at high noon.

After the oath, some classes continued to watch some of the afternoon events, while others participated in debriefing activities. While attendees in Washington DC were aiming their cell phones to capture photos and videos of the events, City school students were using the Internet to post comments using an educational tool called Voice Thread, where students can add their voice or text comments to reflection questions.




Click here to see a larger version of this VoiceThread.

Older classes participated in free write activities that allowed them to express their thoughts and feelings, while some of the younger students passed around Flip Video cameras to capture their ideas. The school website hosts some initial pictures, videos, and the Educational Voice Thread activity of this historic event; while additional videos are being prepared by students to be hosted in City School’s lobby kiosk.

Seventh grade student composition selected for Opus 17

Three St. Albans City school students, and their music teacher, Ms. Arlene Jarvis, were beaming with pride as they listened to the sounds of tuba, trombone, and trumpet from the The Constitution brass quintet play an original composition by seventh grader, Tracey at the Elley Long Music Center on December 2nd. The concerted featured original student compositions from around Vermont selected to be featured at Opus 17 – the Vermont Midi’s bi-annual concert featuring live performance of student composition by professional musicians.

Fifteen compositions were selected from those submitted by VT MIDI student participants for consideration in the evening concert. Tracey’s composition “Melody of Moving Castles” featured tuba, trombone, and trumpet. Composing music using the computer and music software such as Seibilus, not only helps students edit, revise, and listen to their music as they learn music theory, but it also helps them collaborate with real music composers to improve their pieces. The students post their pieces in a password protected site and work with mentors to revise and develop their compositions. They learn how to prepare a final score with all the necessary markings for a live performance and how to write for ‘real instruments’.

Those students whose compositions are selected for the evening concert are invited to rehearse and work with the musicians as they prepare for the event. When they are not rehearsing, the students network with other musicians and attend workshops offered by The Vermont Midi Project. This year’s workshops included Jim Frankel speaking on “What Copyright means to Composers and Consumers, along with a discussion session with VSO Music Advisor, David Ludwig. Ms. Jarvis accompanied Tracey and two fellow students to the event to St. Michael’s Elley-Long Music Center for the day’s events and the evening concert.

Here is the first page of Tracey's composition.

Official Ballot Count from Student Mock Election

Just a few hours after the polls closed for the St. Albans City School Mock Election, seventh grade students reported the final tally for the paper ballots submitted by students in grades 5-8.




Teachers at St. Albans City School helped prepare tomorrow's voters by helping them develop the critical thinking skills they will need to be responsible citizen. This included reading and writing about the candidates and the issues, a mock debate with student representatives for the candidates, a student mock election in the middle school, and helping out at the St. Albans City polls.

The students used technology skills to conduct research, survey students about the issues they believe are most important, creating an electronic version of the ballot, and create graphs that analyze the data they collected. Even the discussion about the pros and cons of electronic voting is part of the experience that prepares our students to be tomorrow's leaders.

2008 Mock Election At St. Albans City School

Students in Grades 5 - 8 cast their vote for the next U.S. President today in a student mock election.

Premilinary results are here from today's voting. Electronics vote report the following results. Stay tuned for the official ballot count, later today.

Preparing for the 2008 Election

Mr Moore's Learning Lab is preparing a series of events leading up to a middle school mock election.

Event # 1 - 2008 Election Research Survey

As an eighth grade learning lab we are gathering research to help us with our mock election. Would you please take the time to answer our survey questions by giving us what you think are the most important issues in this election.

Click here to take our survey.

Tech Savvy Kids Help Prepare for School Opening

Sometime what appears to look like a big mess, turns into a great opportunity. Or so found a handful of Tech Savvy Kids as they attended a training session on how to properly setup classroom computers, followed by the opportunity to use their new skills to help St. Albans City School get ready for opening day. Water damage during this summer‘s roofing project resulted in extra challenges getting the classrooms ready. Ms deLaBruere looked at this challenge as an opportunity for middle school students to practice their leadership skills and tech skills by organizing a team who students who welcomed the opportunity to help their school community prepare for the opening of school.

The team of middle school students were part of the Tech Savvy Kids network at St. Albans City and Town Schools. Each of them has been learning leadership and tech skills through the annual Tech Savvy Kids Summer Camp and other Tech Savvy Kids activities at their respective school during the school year. The students arrived on the scene to see large piles of tangled wires amongst hallways full of furniture and computer equipment waiting to be put back into classrooms. While cleaning and construction crews put finishing touches on the rooms, Ms. deLaBruere provided the student team with training on how to setup computer equipment that met safety guidelines for a classroom. The students then plowed through the classroom, attacking one room at a time, learning leadership, problem-solving, troubleshooting and how to work as a team.

“We learned that sometimes you have to create a bigger mess to come up a good solution” noted student leader, Nichole as she and her teammates decided that they needed to disassemble everything and start from scratch in one room. Dylan felt he learned the importance of good communication skills when working as a team “I gave calm directions to get the jobs done faster, and the whole group benefits when there is a person that calmly leads the way to get things done and helps the group.” explained Dylan.

Sharing Internet Sites using del.icio.us

How many times have you saved a website on Favorites or Bookmarks on your computer?

Have you ever wished you could see your bookmarks when you were using a different computer?

Social Bookmarking sites like del.icio.us allow you to do this.

Many teachers and classrooms are using del.icio.us to share valueable web sites.

Here you can get the the Grade 5 collection of websites by typing in del.icio.us/stacs5
del.icio.us/stacs5