March 28, 2013. Laurie Gill’s third grade classroom at Green Valley School has probably never been more special than during a recent lesson that featured the triple treat enhancements of beautiful lilies, new iPads, and NC Teacher of the Year Darcy Grimes.
Grimes was an appropriate choice to help out on this lesson not just for her star power as the NC Teacher of the Year but also because she has been a skilled and regular user of instructional technology in her own third grade classroom at Bethel. In her role as NC Teacher of the Year, she frequently offers tips on the appropriate use of instructional technology during her visits to other school systems and she extols the value of these tools during presentations to educational and civic groups across the state.
Separately from Green Valley’s use of iPads shared among its classrooms, pilot projects that provide an iPad for each student are getting underway this spring in several classrooms at Mabel Elementary and Watauga High School. These projects will help local educators identify best practices in the use of individually assigned tablet-type devices as well as the most effective and economical apps available for classroom use.
Students at the high school are already furnished with individual laptop computers under a 1-to-1 initiative that began shortly after the new high school opened in August of 2010 but other options such as tablet devices will be considered when the time comes to replace their existing computers.
Green Valley School has an enrollment of 395 students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade and is rated a School of Distinction and a school of high academic growth on the NC ABCs accountability model.
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