District/School Administration PK-16 Program Support Educational Technology
Technology Toolkit

Uncovering the Quabbin
New Salem-Wendell Regional School District

Description of Activities

Children gathered resources and began to find information. Using AlphaSmart keyboards the students took notes and created rough drafts [PDF] of their written work. They then moved on to Microsoft Word to elaborate on their writing, edit their drafts [PDF], and format the final copies of their fact sheets. These word-processed documents later became part of the class web page.

The students gathered additional information by taking field trips to the Swift River Valley Historical Society, Harvard Forest, and Sturbridge Village, and by studying maps, photos and drawings. The students learned to use digital cameras and scanners for visual documentation of the information the class found. The students took many pictures of artifacts and visitors who shared information with them about the Quabbin.

The children also became experts at scanning documents and working with Adobe Photoshop to enhance and crop their photographs. The students then transferred the images into their Swift River folders on the network server and imported the images into their word-processed fact [PDF] sheets. Student fact sheets were combined to develop a class web site about the history of New Salem and the Quabbin area (http://www.swiftriver.k14.mass.edu/quabbin/index.html).

For the culminating activity, an evening event was held to unveil the web site for families and the community. The students demonstrated their Internet navigational skills by guiding the guests through the many web site pages. They were extremely proud of all their hard work that made this project a success.

Universal Design/Inclusion
Children who find it difficult to write with pencil on paper appreciate being able to use AlphaSmart keyboards and other electronic tools to help with writing. All Swift River third graders completed this project. They worked with AlphaSmart keyboards to document findings at the start. This was a very important beginning step because everyone felt included. Microsoft Word facilitated the creation of uniform documents. Students used Word's spelling checker and cut and paste functions to create well-crafted text. Don Johnston's Co:Writer (word predictor software) was available to any student who could benefit from that support.

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