Terry's Tech Tips

As we talk about student engagement at CCHS, providing students with ' authentic, meaningful, real-world learning experiences ' is one technique that increases student engagement.  Theresa Ruggiero's Meteorology students routinely engage with meteorology experts to answer timely, real-world weather questions.  Here is how she does it! As a reminder, the CCHS Student Engagement Committee defines Student Engagement as: ...the degree of attention, curiosity, interest, optimism, and/or passion that students show when they are learning or being taught, which extends to the level of motivation they have to learn and progress in their education. Theresa's students watch the Weather Underground internet broadcast WUTV on Wednesday nights as homework.  (WUTV is a national weather news program shown weeknights 6-8 p.m.)  Using knowledge learned during Meteorology class, students post questions to expert meteorologists at the weather program abou...

Current educational trends focus on developing critical thinking and problem solving skills in students, along with  promoting student voice and choice to enhance engagement. Elaine Picard & Kevin Pennucci designed a brilliant project for their AP Physics course that accomplishes both of these goals! Like all AP courses, the curriculum is focused and fast leading up to the AP test.  After the test in May,  AP courses offer a few days to plan enriching and engaging projects.  Elaine & Kevin purchased some Arduino  circuit boards for use in the project.  (Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software.) Students were placed in teams and asked to create a project of their choice.  The only stipulation was they needed to use the Arduino hardware and embedded software. Watch the video of one teams' project presentation: You can tell from the video that students were engaged and exci...