Projecting Success for Franklin Lakes School District
Franklin Lakes School District, a K-8 district in Northern New Jersey, recognizes the important role technology plays in today's changing education system and has become one of the most progressive school districts in the country in terms of its commitment to providing its teachers and students with access to technology. Among the most important technologies the school uses in its classrooms are LCD projectors from Hitachi America, Ltd.
Today's teachers want to use projectors in their classrooms to take advantage of visual technology-a medium students have become very familiar with and one that engages and holds students' attention. The teachers of Franklin Lakes School District are finding a number of different uses for projectors to be used as instructional tools in the classroom. "The benefits we have achieved as a result of our projector implementations have been tremendous and our goal is to equip every district classroom with a projector," said Bridget Pastenkos, technology coordinator for the Franklin Lakes School District. "Our teachers have been pleased with the projectors we have purchased from Hitachi because of their high lumen capacity, which means classroom lights do not need to be turned off while the projector is in use. They are also extremely mobile, simple to operate and easy to connect with a variety of other technologies."
Franklin Lakes teachers have integrated the use of projectors into their classrooms in several ways:
- During back to school night, projectors are used in classrooms to introduce parents to the District and class Web sites - where parents and students will be able to find assignments and news throughout the year.
- In art classes, small movie clips extracted from videotapes, laser discs or the Web are presented with the aid of a projector. Teachers also use the projectors to showcase student artwork.
- Social studies classes use the projectors to display multimedia presentations put together by students as their final research project. Social studies teachers also use the projector to display up to the minute current events from cable TV or the Web that engages a student's attention in ways a textbook does not.
- Projectors are also used to teach literacy. Language arts teachers can project writing samples and edit them with the students and can also model the writing process-a process that is appropriate for all ages and content areas.
- World language teachers use projectors to teach vocabulary and culture simultaneously. The projector is used to show images that depict daily Spanish life and can project video clips that help the students' better experience the culture they are studying.
- A middle school music teacher in Franklin Lakes uses the projector screen as a "digital blackboard" and has transferred all of his lessons to PowerPoint, saving him instructional time by not having to re-write the day's lesson over and over again. Absent students also have better access to the day's lesson because of the electronic format.
There's no question that projectors can enhance teaching and learning, and the students are ready. Today's generation understands what a PowerPoint presentation is and is accustomed to Web surfing during class.
Franklin Lakes School District is pleased to have a partner in Hitachi America, Ltd. to help bring an impressive range of audio and video capabilities into its classrooms and most importantly, directly to its students.
Courtesy of Hitachi America, Ltd.