Watchung Students Show Off Technology Projects

With a 3-D printer, weather tracking and music videos, students in the Watchung Hills Regional School District showed off technological skills at a recent board of education meeting.

Students attended Thursday’s meeting to present the projects they have been working on over the past school year.

First to present was the first and second grade combination class, taught by recent teacher-of-the-year honoree Jennifer Marquis-Dursee.

The students spoke about their studies of weather.

“The first grade has always tracked weather, and we were thinking about how we could step it up,” Marquis-Dursee said. “We always did Watchung weather, so we picked places around the world.”

Every morning, Marquis-Dursee said, students take their iPads and find the weather for assigned locations around the world.

“We have two students per iPad,” she said. “The students check the weather and plot it on a line graph.”

Several of the students spoke about what they had learned, including the fact that places near the Equator are warmer and places farther away are colder.

One student explained that the temperature in Watchung is similar to that in Istanbul because both locations are in the same spot between the North Pole and Equator.

“I remember doing the weather project in ninth grade, and now they’re doing it in first grade with iPads,” said board member Charles Neiss.

Moving on to the fourth grade class, district gifted program teacher Elaine Chesebro brought her students forward to discuss how they are using technology to study the brain.

The students showed off different diagrams they have studied and videos they look at to learn about brain dissections.

Students said they enjoy using the computers better than regular books because they can click on words they don’t understand, rather than having to lug around heavy dictionaries.

Also shown off at the meeting was the use of the new 3-D printer, which board member Tina Kelly said was purchased through a $2,500 grant from the Watchung Education Association.

Finally, eighth grade students showed off the music videos they were making.

Tim McCarthy, the eighth grade math and computer teacher, said he has a curriculum of typing, spreadsheets and more, but they have also had the time to explore using the iPads to create music videos and other projects.