Episcopal Collegiate School: News & Events

Technology Integration Newsletter

by Christian A. Rogers

Hardware and software are only as good as the individual who has the ability to effectively use them. An individual’s abilities are based on the needs that are generated by their environment. At Episcopal Collegiate, our technology integration program is always striving to create a challenging environment for its students so that they graduate with the skills to effectively choose and use the right software and hardware to meet any challenge. Essentially Episcopal Collegiate students are taught to critically think through technology.

This issue’s projects are no exception, as our fearless ground-breaking faculty continue to push the envelope with new creative integration challenges for their students. Each faculty name below is directly linked to their email. Please don’t hesitate to click on a faculty member's name to comment or ask questions about their integration projects. Every good program needs the active support and attention of its members.

Global Warming Website

Karen Patterson’s Middle School history 7 students have been working hard to promote awareness of Global Warming through the development of a new Episcopal Collegiate Global Warming Website . Their site provides a virtual venue for Mrs. Patterson’s students to publish their research and opinions through communicative technologies like Blogging, Wikis, and Pod casts. The Global Warming Website is a dynamic environment where students can exercise their Multi-Faceted Plans and advocate Global thinking through the mediums of the 21st Century.

Literary Map

Judy White’s Middle School English 8 students are modeling the New York Times A Literary Map of Manhattan by creating a Literary Map of Arkansas. To do this, each student was given the responsibility of researching a noted Arkansas author and building an interactive regional map of Arkansas. Students used advanced PowerPoint trigger animation skills to ensure that their author’s information would peek out on the click of a numbered book icon. The broader scope of Mrs. White’s project is to promote civic awareness of local writers with the hope of farming this visual reference resource out to local libraries via website. The Arkansas Literary Map entry above was built by Christian Roberson.

Terremoto (Earthquake) Tracker

Noel Herndon’s Middle School earth science students “walked” in the shoes of both a global navigator and a seismologist as they plotted and classified earthquake epicenters around the world. After using a coordinate longitude latitude map, they created Visual Basic command buttons that housed crucial location, depth and magnitude details. Mrs. Herndon’s students then placed a tectonic boundary map of the earth precisely behind their rated epicenters to see how well they matched up with the plate boundaries. This project culminates with an excellent webpage form evaluation where these young scientists can record their findings and draw significant conclusions. This is an amazing integration project that has run successfully for its third year, exciting students about the potential of technology and the dynamic properties of the Earth.

Dilation Designs

Stan Whittlesey’s Upper School advanced geometry students have built many dilation designs in their study of circles, which has helped provide insights into chords, tangents, inscribed and central angles and their intercepted arcs. Mr. Whittlesey’s students were able to make clear observations on the properties of circumscribed circles and the resulting polygons that can be designed with line intersections to the circumcenter. The pieces displayed above are “similar polygons” built by Rachel Garrett and Mark Edlund. In Mr. Whittlesey’s advanced pre-calculus class, students have studied the ambiguous case of the Law of Sines, the Law of Cosines, hyperbolas, ellipses, and trigonometric functions which result from multiplying two other trigonometric functions. In AP Calculus, students have used sketchpad to help visualize how definite integrals can be approximated using rectangles and by trapezoids. Please visit the new online Geometer’s Sketchpad Gallery to see more showcase constructions.

What am I?

Suzanne Wilmoth’s Middle School life science students created a digital puzzle to further explore the characteristics of endangered species on our planet. Each student was responsible for choosing a secret animal image and placing it on a PowerPoint master slide. Dr. Wilmoth’s students then placed basic shapes over their image, researched their animal, and typed in progressive clues for each shape. Students then exchanged their digital puzzles and, through playing, learned important information on many endangered species. Dr. Wilmoth’s students also learned that there is much more to PowerPoint than bulleted slideshows. The puzzle shown above was built by Sydney Davis.

Light & Color Part I

Michelle Dowell’s conceptual physics students participated in the first of two Excel integration projects that investigate light and color. Her students mixed three of the colors from the visible light spectrum to create different colors of light. They were introduced to the RGB color system of light, which they may be familiar with from using graphics software on a computer. To complete this activity, Michelle’s student’s explored primary and secondary colors of light, manipulated a color generator, and determined RGB color values. This project introduces Mrs. Dowell’s students to the properties of emitted light from vacuum tubes and plasma screens on cell phones, computers and televisions.

3D Masterpieces

David Warren’s Upper School studio art II students chose a painting by a master artist and translated it into a 3-dimensional piece. The first step was to place their paintings on a box in the background of their 3D stage, to use as a reference. Then Mr. Warren’s students began using basic primitives, extruded splines, and parametrically deformed shapes to reproduce the most significant objects in their chosen master works. Finally, students applied materials, spotlights, and animation to make their new creations come to life. The pieces above were built by Chris Bagwell and Luke Quinn and will soon be on display with many more 3D master compositions at Episcopal Collegiate’s Fine Arts Gallery .

Light & Color Part 2

Michelle Dowell’s Upper School Conceptual Physics students participated in the second project in a two-part series about light and color. Her students were introduced to concepts of selective reflection for opaque objects and selective transmission for transparent objects and explored how objects absorb or subtract wavelengths of light in order to produce color. To complete this activity, Mrs. Dowell’s students:

reviewed information on the process of producing color by selective reflection and selective transmission;
investigated the effect of illuminating objects with different colored light;
recorded observations and results in a table; and
explained a particular scenario for each process.

Michelle’s students worked with an Excel template that logically guided them through the investigation process and encouraged them to draw significant conclusions on light and color.

Digital Value Study

David Warren’s Upper School studio I students investigated the three values of color (hue, value and chroma) through the manipulation of digital photographs in MS Paint. Mr. Warren’s students adopted a color scheme then through defining hue, saturation and luminance they painted pixel by pixel over their digital photographs, making sure to adjust luminance and hue to match lighting and color depth on their photographs. Students learned that even the simplest software can help build very dramatic pieces of art. The works above were created by Catherine Demailly and Matt Dinehart. More digital value studies can be found online at Fine Arts Gallery .

    Declaration of Appreciation

Judy White’s Middle School writing 6 students have just finished composing and formally formatting Declarations of Appreciation for their parents.

“Who loves you, cares for you, and does more for you than anyone in the whole world? Most likely, it’s either your mother or father. Too often, we forget to thank them for everything they have done or still do for us and to tell them how important they are to us.”    Judy White

Mrs. White’s students exercised word formatting skills in setting page margins, line spacing, left and first-line indentation, bulleting and page borders to design and build this formal appreciation document.

"Only through constantly building with instruments of technology will our students become affective contributors to the 21st Century." Christian A. Rogers