Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Schools are hopping on the trend by allowing technology in classrooms and libraries. This past Monday morning, Amy Zock gave a tour of the Media Hub and STEM Center in the library at Hutto Elementary School to Southwest Georgia Regional Librarians, Cynthia Jones, Catherine Vanstone, and Susan Whittle. Zock and the librarians viewed technology’s usefulness in student learning, and the librarians are interested in incorporating technology into the Southwest Georgia Library for future endeavors.

 

Beth Jones, Marketing and Programming Librarian, states the entire reason for visiting the Media Hub and STEM Center in the Hutto Library was to “get inspiration from other libraries, and we can only make the public library better if we’re seeing what’s working in the schools, because we’re trying to bring more youth into the library and provide them the things that they need to help support their education.”

 

The Librarians gained insight into technological learning by watching a class play a game called “Bicycle”. The game was played on a mat and students would run back and forth and touch circular spots on the mat with their feet until the timer ran out. They would then be asked questions about fractions involving tenths and hundreds place using decimals. If they got the answer right, an upside green thumb would appear. The game continued until every student had a turn. Afterwards, they moved on to a  pirate game. Students were split up into four teams with different colors. One at a time, a student from a team would tap their foot on an island they wanted to claim, and they would be asked multiplication questions. The bigger the island, the harder the question. 

 

Afterwards, the librarians used virtual reality headsets that showcase immersive experiences and spatial concepts in the ocean and wildlife. 

 

 Susan Whittle, Director at Southwest Georgia Library, was enthralled about education’s progression that she said, “as a former English teacher, this is the most fascinating discovery in education that I have ever seen.”  

 

Amy Zock explained more information about the progress students are making through technology by stating, “We need kids to be able to differentiate between good media and not good media, fake news and real news. Multimodal output is where you see switches from what they are reading to being more technology output or the project output from diorama to a video. A few weeks ago we did music that was related to a story where they had to code the music using ear sketches from Georgia Tech. So, our kids are coding as young as third grade. It’s really exciting.”