Author: Tammy Lane • First Posted: Friday, May 21, 2010

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Students at Julius Marks Elementary invited the international visitors into their TV studio and explained how they create the morning news show.

Two Fayette County schools hosted nearly a dozen educators from North Africa and the Near East who wanted to see how U.S. students use technology these days.

“Because our students have grown up with technology, they sometimes understand it better than adults,” Greg Drake, the district’s coordinator of instructional technology, said during their tour.

The group of educators, teachers and policymakers visited Julius Marks Elementary and Winburn Middle School on Friday afternoon, along with interpreters since most were Arabic speakers. Drake and IAKSS technology resource teachers Leanna Prater and Jamie Burch accompanied them at each site.

At Julius Marks, librarian Debbie Kiser and a handful of students shared some work created for the recent Student Technology Leadership Program state showcase, such as computer animation, a documentary on the Pledge of Allegiance and samples of manipulated photographs.

The kids also walked the visitors through a typical morning news show, demonstrating how they film segments, edit videotape in the studio and broadcast via closed-circuit television. Kiser, the STLP advisor, noted that Julius Marks has a set of 24 flip cameras available for classroom checkout, and the school is set up for videoconferencing.

“The students love to use the equipment,” Kiser said, adding, “Once I teach one student, that student teaches others.”

At Winburn, Ashley Rosen’s tour included a computer lab, the library with its 16 computer stations and a classroom where Spanish students were using a SMART Board in a “Jeopardy!” challenge.

The group also stopped off in Rosen’s modular technology classroom, where kids focus on science and math through experimentation with Lego robotics, aerodynamic cars and solid-fuel rockets. Rosen pointed out that Winburn also has 30 Netbook computers for math classes and four mobile labs with groups of laptops that teachers can reserve.

“We try to incorporate math and science content into what we’re doing with technology,” Drake told the visiting educators.

The guests hailed from such countries as Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Iraq and Oman. Their stop in Kentucky was part of a three-week program sponsored by the U.S. State Department; the itinerary also included Washington, D.C.; San Diego and New York City.