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LASF grant guides students at Stanley toward multi-media

By Sandy Mouat
CORRESPONDENT

‘Tis the season when the Lafayette Arts and Sciences Foundation (LASF), awards grants for innovative curricular pilot programs.
      "Leadership Throughout Time - A Multimedia Experience", one of several programs approved last Spring, challenges students to combine research on historical leaders and interviews with current community leaders, to create their own video presentations, using digital photography and advanced computer technology.
      This activity provides invaluable exercise in creative problem-solving and teamwork. The students first spend a few weeks becoming proficient in the basics of theater production. Using interactive software programs, students working in groups are responsible for creating a script, designing sets, and incorporating lighting and music to keep pace with the theme, dialogue, and movements of the animated "actors". After they have blocked out all of the elements of their play on the computer, the students must create a live production of the play. Students also practice interviewing techniques in anticipation of their meetings with community leaders. They strive for a professional look, and videotape their mock interviews to study the results. One obvious benefit is how quickly the students become "co-workers" in this team-building environment.
      "This is a program in its infancy, but it is off to a strong start," stated Stanley Intermediate School teacher Amy Wright, who first brought the proposal to the LASF. "We are seeing more and more ways to implement the program, as it develops." Wright’s own enthusiasm for the project is reflected in the ebullient participation of students in the seventh and eighth grade Media Arts-Production Studio elective class, as well as in the sixth grade "SMART wheel" of Stanley’s curricular electives. The lessons in digital photography are also applied to the production of the weekly student newspaper.
      "The students are really excited, and inspired to create terrific projects", said Mrs. Wright. She continued, "These early efforts will give them the skills they will need when they are conducting actual interviews, and reviewing and editing the videotapes." They will produce their final year-end projects using Avid Cinema, an all encompassing video production and editing computer software program. This new curriculum is a great introduction to the multi-media skills in which proficiency will be expected by the time these students enter the work force.
      Through another LASF Spring grant, an Automated Weather System was installed on the Burton Valley Elementary School campus. The information gathered by the system provides support to the fourth grade curriculum focused on the study of the earth’s atmosphere. Just as it has for the 27,000 other school sites nationwide that are networked through this system, the new weather station helps to bring the study of the atmosphere alive for the students, with the most current weather data available for hands-on meteorology. The external sensor unit, rotating on top of the school library, brings up to the minute atmospheric information to an interactive electronic display which is located inside the library, accessible to the whole student body.
      The proposal for this AirWatch System was brought to the LASF by Burton Valley fourth grade teacher Eric Meinbress, a licensed private pilot, who incorporates his avocation into his lessons by teaching the children to use weather and geography information to chart their own flight plans. The students access the AirWatch system for the most current weather, right from their own school site, as well as access information from the Concord Airport air traffic controllers office. They then practice their math skills to graphically interpret the scientific information and chart a thorough flight plan from take-off to landing.
      Excited about the Internet link, Meinbress said, "All of the schools in the district can make use of this resource, not only at the fourth grade level, but at a variety of grade levels."
      In regard to the wealth of enriching lesson plans included with the hardware Meinbress continued, "There is interest in the study of the weather at all grade levels. Even in the kindergarten classes, the students note what the weather is like outside everyday, and place a corresponding sticker on their classroom calendar. These lesson plans are easily adaptable to all grade levels, including high school."
      As in the case of the Multi-Media project, the AirWatch System weather station is another project that began as an idea to supplement one area of study, but has the potential to become a valuable, interdisciplinary teaching tool. At this time, students at Burton Valley School are learning the basic skills to access the information and use it to graph weather trends. Soon, not only will the program be applied to the science curriculum as planned, but it will also be a great resource for Social Studies, Math, and journal-writing, to name just a few of the possible applications. Visit the Burton Valley Elementary School weather station via the direct link from the LASF home page @ www.lasf.org.
      The Stanley Music Department has a superior teaching aid in Practica Musica, a software program that guides each student at his/her own pace through lessons in music theory, pitch, sight reading, and rhythm, as the achievement of each student is tracked and documented. Stanley’s music teacher, Bob Athayde, has the capability to keep program files for over three hundred students, through an LASF grant for software and hardware.
      Acalanes High School received LASF grants for projects that support the curriculum of many subjects including the Social Studies, Foreign Language, Math and Tech Ed Departments. Please visit the LASF website for a complete summary of all of the grants awarded to schools in the Lafayette School District, as well as those awarded to Acalanes High School, in the Fall of 1997 and the Spring of 1998.
      As of this writing, the LASF Board of Directors is preparing to vote on the latest round of grant proposals spanning elementary, intermediate, and high school curriculum.

12/9/98 Reprinted with permission. Visit the Contra Costa Times on the web at www.contracostatimes.com.

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