(PRLEAP.COM) Ithaca, NY – April 20, 2007 – The Elmira City School District and the Holy Family Intermediate School have jointly been awarded a $50,000 New York State Learning Technology Grant from the New York State Education Department to support the implementation of the Cornell Theory Center’s (CTC) SciScentr Cyber Civilizations (CyberCiv) Project. The money will be used to support integration of interactive, virtual world technology into the schools’ middle school English language arts/social studies curricula.
“ Visual representation of content and providing the opportunity for students to work together to solve problems – physically or remotely – promote retention of information, provide opportunity for reflection and help them create their own personal meanin.. ”
CyberCiv will bolster sixth-grade students’ English language arts and technology achievement by engaging students in activities centered in five ancient civilization virtual worlds that were developed by CTC specifically for this project. The 219 public and private school students will exercise skills in reading, writing, listening, and speaking as they research ancient civilizations using both traditional and online sources. Through a staged process, students will learn to create their own online, virtual world exhibits of ancient civilizations.Undergraduate students from Cornell University will serve as mentors to the middle school students providing them instruction and guidance on how to create, move and build in their virtual ancient worlds.
Margaret Corbit, SciFair’s Outreach Manager, explains, “Elmira City Schools have shown a serious commitment to expanding access to computers and innovative programming. We are working directly with administrators and teachers to develop the CyberCiv project so that it will engage students by leveraging their attraction to online games, virtual worlds and instant messaging while in turn fostering students’ motivation to learn.”
Learning Technology Grants aim to improve academic performance through the incorporation of technology in the classroom. They focus on mathematics, Pre-K-12, and English language arts. The grants provide funds for both technology and staff development and are renewable over three years. The Elmira and Holy Family partnership is one of 63 schools or school partnerships across the state that was awarded grants.
Joseph Hochreiter, Elmira City School District deputy superintendent, comments, “Brain research on today’s students is clear. Visual representation of content and providing the opportunity for students to work together to solve problems – physically or remotely – promote retention of information, provide opportunity for reflection and help them create their own personal meaning. Today’s students are growing up on technology that adults are adapting to. Cell phones, iPods and video gaming machines are in the hands of younger and younger students and are widespread in households in every school district. We are fortunate to partner with CTC to help bridge this technical divide between student’s ability to use technology and a school’s ability to deliver instruction using such technology.”
About CTC
CTC is an interdisciplinary research center at Cornell University focused on providing cyberinfrastructure resources for research and education; these resources include high-performance and data-intensive computing hardware and expertise, visualization, and K-12 outreach. Scientific and engineering projects supported by CTC represent a wide variety of disciplines, including bioinformatics, behavioral and social sciences, computer science, engineering, geosciences, mathematics, physical sciences, and business.
About Elmira City School District
The Elmira City School District was founded in 1957 with the consolidation of 29 individual districts. Located in Chemung County on the New York-Pennsylvania border, Elmira serves approximately 7,300 pre-K through grade 12 students drawn from a 206-square-mile area. The district employs approximately 1,400 professional and support staff in 17 buildings.
