CREATING MULTIMEDIA CLASSROOMS IN CLEBURNE COUNTY, ALA.

A Project Funded with Community Service Grants

Recently Cleburne County School Superintendent Scott Coefield, state Rep. Richard Lindsay, and state Sen. Kim Benefield announced a technology initiative in Cleburne County Schools designed to engage students by creating 64 multi-media classrooms in grades 5-12 and 6 media centers. Each classroom received a mounted projector, wall controls, mounted speakers, a mounted screen and a QOMO wireless pad with RM Easiteach software.
“We want to work on course relevance – making the content relevant for the students so they become more engaged in what they are learning. We believe one way to do that is to get more technology in the classrooms.” said Superintendent Coefield. “Today’s kids are all about technology; we have to adapt to that and make sure we are presenting the material in a fashion with which they identify.” Coefield believes some teachers will adapt quickly to their new resources while others will need more time and professional development. We know that we have good teachers and our kids are as capable as any others, but teachers have to have resources, and we have to constantly look at the most effective ways to engage kids. We want the teachers and students of Cleburne County to have the same resources as kids in any other school system, and we believe after this project our schools will be ahead of the curve. I don’t know of another school system around us that will have any better set up as far as technology,” he said.
Most classrooms have already received their equipment and teachers have been trained on the Easiteach software and QOMO pads. Peggy Collum, district technology coordinator, notes that teachers are enthusiastic about using these new resources and many began using the equipment from the first day. Rep. Lindsey was especially impressed with Easiteach’s ability to read text that had been translated to Spanish. The projects will be completed this fall at all schools except Ranburne High School, which Coefield plans to equip in 2009-2010. When completed, Coefield expects the total cost to be around $200,000 and says the projects will be funded by different grant sources. However, Coefield says the greatest fund source will come from community service grants provided by Rep. Lindsey and Sen. Benefield. “We are extremely grateful to our legislators, without their assistance this project would not be possible,” Coefield said.


Scott Coefield, Superintendent

Peggy Collum, Technology Coordinator

RM MECH-RC LAUCHING AT FETC 09

RM Education will be launching the NEW RM Mech-RC at FETC 09, January 21st -24th. The RM Mech-RC is a fully assembled, programmable humanoid robot has been developed from the original MECHRC™ to provide an ideal solution for engaging and teaching ICT to children aged 14+. It’s out of the box solution makes it quick and easy to get this robot up and running. The robot provides amazing agility and has been designed with transparent panels to enable easy viewing of the servo motors as it moves. With its programmable software and remote control it allows teacher led and small group activities that both challenge and engage. Please visit http://www.rmeducation.com/mech-rc for more information & videos.

RM Sonica ESL To Be Implemented District-Wide In Highlands County, Florida

RM is pleased that Highlands County Schools has chosen RM Education’s English Language Learning software, RM Sonica ESL, as an innovative addition to their current English for Speakers of Other Languages curriculum. Highlands County Schools services over 11,000 students in 16 schools with a staff of over 750 dedicated educators.

RM Sonica ESL is an extremely interactive and engaging program, designed to encourage students to develop a love of English language learning at an early age. RM Sonica ESL takes into account multiple learning styles helping to build the confidence of every student and pushes the boundaries of kinesthetic learning. Instantly engage even the most reticent of learners with interactive games and even dance mat activities. Students can practice listening and responding with interactive presentations while identifying and learning with the RM Sonica ESL family who are used throughout the program.

Highlands also opted to implement within a number of schools in the district RM Podium, software designed to produce podcasts strictly for K-12 education. Easy to use, RM Podium is designed to allow even the youngest of students to be up and running producing and publishing podcasts in minutes. Among the many uses of podcasting in education, Highlands County Schools also recognized the value of this fast growing medium for use in their ESOL program and its objectives.

Jackson Intermediate School recently purchased Easiteach Software

Jackson Intermediate School recently purchased Qomo Boards and Easiteach software for every classroom in our school. Teachers have enjoyed the resources available to them. Along with the whiteboards, each classroom has a mounted projector and speakers plus wall-mounted controllers.


The support team and staff associated with Computrac and Easiteach are outstanding! They are always available to assist us when we have questions. The people with which we have dealt are also friendly and courteous at all times.

Easiteach is available for our teachers at home and at school which makes life a little easier for our teachers and staff. The two days of training helped to ease the transition to Easiteach and the Qomo boards.

The school’s music teacher says, “I love what I can do with the Qomo Board in music. It is great to be able to put a piece of music up so we can all see it. It helps me teach young musicians about their role.” A fourth-grade teacher added, “They are wonderful, and I can’t imagine teaching without them!” In the computer lab, the technology teacher says she uses hers daily. “The students absolutely love it, and so do I! Our fifth-graders are working on Powerpoint presentations now. They can’t wait to show them on the boards!”

This technology is allowing Jackson Intermediate School to be able to prepare our students for the future. Our school is on the cutting edge of technology in our area.

Thanks, RM Easiteach and Computrac

With thanks to Michael Bedsole, principal of Jackson Intermediate School in Jackson, AL

Implementing an Interactive Classroom in KY

Superintendent of Oldham County Schools, Paul Upchurch, presented to the Ohio Valley Educational Cooperative, representing 15 school districts, on the importance of implementing an interactive classroom solution. Mr. Upchurch emphasized to his fellow superintendents that utilizing technology in the classroom has significantly impacted tests scores among the 17 schools in Oldham County. Oldham County Schools currently leads Kentucky in student achievement. The presentation also included ways in which superintendents can fund interactive classrooms.

Fort Payne City Schools Find New Ways to Engage Students

FORT PAYNE, Ala. – Of the 132 school districts in Alabama, Fort Payne City Schools may have the most engaging classrooms of all. Believing it would produce dramatic results in student achievement, last year the school district decided on a bold course to deploy interactive classroom technology across the entire school system.

Fort Payne School Superintendent Jim Cunningham, along with his Technology Coordinator Greg Titshaw, other central office staff and the members of the board of education, chose to raise the funds necessary to supply almost every classroom with a ceiling-mounted projector, an interactive whiteboard, a document camera, a wireless presentation slate, a student response system, and a teacher microphone. The school district chose Computrac Interactive Solutions (now part of RM Educational Software) to do the job.

Last May, Computrac’s installation team worked during the evenings in Fort Payne for more than two full weeks to complete the job, which encompassed 150 classrooms in four schools.

Mr. Cunningham expressed his delight over the way the project was handled in a letter to the CEO of Computrac. Here is what he had to say. “A wise man once stated, ‘You never get a second chance to make a first impression.’ While I believe this statement has merit when evaluating individuals, I feel that it is also true for businesses. I wanted to take just a moment to tell you that you and your company, Computrac, have definitely made an unbelievably positive impression on myself and the other members of my staff which were involved with your recent installation project. The installation of 150 Mitsubishi projectors, 125 Light Speed sound systems and 150 Elmo document cameras was accomplished professionally and within the prescribed time frame. Your entire installation team was very accommodating and flexible in working within the conditions and time parameters which you were given. While these conditions, dictated because school was in session, could have and probably did on occasion cause stress and frustration it was never evident in the attitudes or actions of your staff. You are to be commended for assembling such a hardworking, dedicated and professional group of individuals. I have been involved in public education for 26 years and have never encountered a group that was so determined to do things the right way!

“Again, thank you for all your help and the wonderful job you did for us. Please be assured that I will gladly recommend you and your company. Best of luck in your future endeavors and please know that I would welcome the opportunity to work with you again should the situation arise.”

With thanks to Jim Cunningham, Fort Payne School Superintendent, Fort Payne, AL.

myeasiteach.com launched!

RM is pleased to annoucene the launch of myeasiteach.com, a free service that allows teachers to download RM Easiteach interactive lessons and also upload their own lessons to share with the RM Easiteach community.

There are over 100,000 licences of RM Easiteach in the US, and this service as been provided to users to increase the library of interactive lessons available and share good practice of incorporating RM Easiteach into the curriculum.

Please register today to access myeasiteach.com and browse the free of charge lessons already available and also to upload any lessons other teachers would enjoy using in their classroom.

In addition to the free of charge lessons on myeasiteach.com, RM Easiteach Content packs for Math, English Language Arts, Science and Games are also available for Elementary Schools and a Cross-Curriculum Secondary School pack is also available from your local RM reseller.

For more information go to www.rmeducation.com.

Engaging Students Where they Live

Sprayberry High School's students live in Cobb County, Georgia, but this is not what Alison Coker, Vice-Principle means when she says this. She and her colleagues are all involved in a pilot for the whole county that involves using interactive technologies in the delivery of the curriculum to make the learning process more in keeping with the 21st century student's environment. When asked why Sprayberry was chosen she replies that demographically Sprayberry represents Cobb as a whole in terms of the differing abilities and backgrounds of their intake.

"If it works here it can work in Cobb as a whole."

In each of the 106 classrooms in Sprayberry High School is a Computrac Classroom Solution including interactive whiteboard, projector and wall controller enabling the teacher to easily control the classroom projection system. Installed last fall, 'heavy-duty' use of the technology really began in January, explains Alison, with even the most reticent teachers at the beginning now stating that they 'cannot do without it'.

Sprayberry are now taking their Interactive Classroom Solution to the next level through use of tools and content for any brand of interactive whiteboard/slate from RM Education.

RM Math Framework is a supportive interactive digital curriculum for high (and middle) school Math and the Math department at Sprayberry are enjoying searching for resources by state standard and interweaving the thousand plus activities created using the dynamic Geometer Sketch Pad and RM Easiteach into their current curriculum. Having interactive content like RM Math means that teachers can focus on how they want to deliver resources like 'Transformations of Flags and Fish' with their students rather than having to create resources from scratch every time they want to use their interactive whiteboard. It was designed to help schools like Sprayberry to see a return on their investment more readily and encourage teachers to use technology when it is the best medium for delivering a lesson.

Further down the corridor, English and Social Studies teachers and students alike are excited to be using RM Podium, the all-in one podcasting solution for education. Poems, book reviews and play readings are all being podcasted because sometimes the written word is not always the best medium for presenting these things and by embracing podcasting Sprayberry are reclaiming technology for the classroom and engaging their technology-minded students. Alison also talks of their English as a Second Language students and how they are benefiting from listening to podcasts created by their teachers/peers on unfamiliar vocabulary and how they can listen to the pronunciations over and over again, anytime, anywhere using their mp3 players. She talks of students 'blooming' and about them 'taking over the learning process in a positive way'.

There is no doubt that Sprayberry is cutting edge when it comes to educational technology and by standardizing on the tools and content being used, the school can be assured that whatever hardware piece they add in the future, RM software provides them with an agnostic platform that will work with any brand of interactive technology.

There are over 100,000 students in Cobb County and RM Education together with its local partner Computrac look forward to helping each and every teacher to maximize opportunities for interactivity and engagement in the classroom by providing them with innovative and interactive content solutions designed by teachers for our discerning learners of today.

After all, as Alison quite rightly concludes 'this is all about increasing the engagement of our students' and reaching out into their world, a world where technology is integral to their daily life and perhaps more importantly, how they choose to operate.


With thanks to Alison Coker, Vice Principal of Sprayberry High School, GA.

RM at NCTM, Salt Lake City, 9-12th April

RM Education will be at NTCM in Salt Lake City from the 9-12th April (Booth Number 2435) showing the latest version of RM Math Framework Edition for both Middle and High Schools with all lessons aligned fully to State Standards. RM Math is an exicting digital curriculum that can be utlized on all brands of Interactive Whiteboards and wireless Slates/Pads to help increase attainment and motivation in the Math classroom through the interactive activities, lessons and assessment. RM Math also includes RM Kaleidos, the

RM will also be showing the new Secondary Content Pack for RM Easiteach which includes a wealth of engaging content for Interactive Whiteboards and Slates and is the latest addition to the ever expanding RM Easiteach family.

In addition to RM Math and RM Easiteach, RM will also be demonstrating the RM Bee-bot and RM Pro-bot student robots, and the RM Tuff-cam student digital camera and digital video camera.

Finally, RM will be hosting Singin' & Signin on the RM Booth, a revolutionary supplemental math program designed for intermediate grades. Through easily recalled childhood songs and chants, the program teaches complex concepts using accompanying signs and gestures that easily adapts to any curriculum. In this interactive workshop, you will learn how to teach the program by becoming a student. Be ready for a fun, interactive way to learn and apply math formulas. The musical methodology is so catchy that you will be singing formulas in your head long after the session ends. Signin' & Signin' uses RM Easiteach as a tool to deliver the program.

RM Easiteach wins Award

RM Educational Software, Inc, has recently won an award for RM Easiteach TV in the District Administrator Top 100 Products of 2007/2008 Awards that are voted for by educators at the leading edge of educational technology.

RM Easiteach TV was developed in direct response to teachers wanting a step by step guide to using the features found within RM Easiteach. Although RM Easiteach is simple to use, RM acknowledges that teachers time is precious and to get the best out of an investment such as Interactive Technologies in the Classroom, teachers require an anytime, anywhere learning approach.

RM Easiteach TV provides very focused tutorials for each of the key features of RM Easiteach such as the curriculum focused toolbars and content packs. RM wants educators to be successful with RM Easiteach and this award backs up this approach and RM will continue to make professional development a priority.

RM Easiteach chosen for Large District Wide Interactive Technology Implementation

RM Easiteach has been chosen as the preferred Interactive Software Solution for one of the largest districts in Arizona.
Chandler USD in Phoenix, Arizona recently purchased a District Wide Licence of RM Easiteach for use on their eInstruction CPS Chalkboards purchased for use by over 1500 teachers. RM Easiteach was chosen to help pull together all the districts interactive technologies such as Interactive Whiteboards, CPS e Instruction Chalkboards, Document Cameras and Projectors. The district chose a complete licence of RM Easiteach, the dedicated curriculum toolbars for Math, ELA, Science and Social Sciences and the full suite of RM Easiteach State Aligned Elementary Content Packs in Math, ELA, Science and Educational Games.

The eInstruction CPS Chalkboard and RM Easiteach, releases the teacher to teach interactively from anywhere in the classroom, allowing whole class and group teaching to be done effectively and also allows full student participation.

RM's preferred partner in Arizona, CCS Presentation Systems, worked with RM on this exciting project and RM recently completed the first round of training.

For more information on RM Easiteach Tools and Content, click HERE.

For more information on CCS Presentation Systems, click HERE

RM to demonstrate RM TTS Products at National Science Teachers Association

RM is pleased to announce we will be demonstrating the RM TTS Range at the NSTA Conference in Boston from 27th-30th March 2008 (Booth number 2354).

Highlights will be the RM Tuff-Scope

Transform your Tuff-Cam into a digital microscope with our new Tuff-Scope. Portable and simple to use, you can take magnified digital pictures either attached to or away from the PC. The microscope can be used with the Tuff-Cam attachment as a digital microscope or without the attachment as a normal microscope. The imaging head can be removed from the stand to make it hand held.
Magnification

50x - 100x

100x -200x

200x -400x
2x Continuous Optical Zoom
Storage Draw
Transmissive and reflective LED Lighting
Powered by 3xAA batteries (not supplied)

Price $40 making the Tuff-Scope very affordable for getting technology into the hands of Students.

A RM Tuff-Scope and RM Tuff-Cam bundle available at NSTA will be $210 ($10 saving).

Also being demonstrated at NSTA will be the new RM Easiteach Secondary Content Pack that includes high quality virtual science experiements and independent learning for students.

f you have an Interactive Whiteboard, Wireless Slate or Pad or a projector, you can utilize RM Easiteach to help bring difficult concepts to life using Interactive Technologies to provide students with highly engaging and motivating lessons to help increase attainment.

Some examples of the high quality virtual experiments below:

Main Menu of Secondary Science Pack

Interactive Vaccines Experiement

Video of Ultrasound Scan plays back in RM Easiteach

Photosythesis Menu

RM Sonica ESL Interactive Language Learning

RM Announces more information on RM Sonica ESL.

RM Sonica will be shipping from April and will include 3 Dancemats as standard to fully utilize the very innovative and interactive Dancemat Activities within this exciting new way of learning English Language.

Example of Dancemat Activity

Example of Resource Manager

Example of Assessment Editor

For more information on RM Sonica ESL or if you would like to represent RM Sonica please click HERE

RM Announces RM Sonica ESL Interactive Language Learning

RM is pleased to announce a new and interactive approach to improving English Language Learning for those with Spanish as a first language. RM Sonica ESL has been specifically designed to engage and motivate students using high quality, flash based interactive activities, dance mat technologies and a truly kinaesthetic learning experience.
RM Sonica ESL has been designed to work on all brands of Interactive Whiteboards, Wireless Slate and Pad but can also be used on standalone computers. This approach greatly enhances the focus of students and can help accelerate the learning of English.
RM is currently seeking 5 districts to trial RM Sonica ESL. One school chosen by the district will receive a site licence of RM Sonica ESL and one day of professional development all free of charge. If you would like to participate in this exciting programme please contact Christy Smith at csmith@rmeducation.com for more information.
Click HERE to explore 3 example from the 100’s of activities available in RM Sonica ESL.

RM Math Framework Edition in T.H.E Journal

RM Math Framework Edition in recent T.H.E Journal

Improving Instruction with Interactive Whiteboards (on the Cheap)
by Dian Schaffhauser

The Dennis-Yarmouth Regional School District in South Yarmouth, MA faces obstacles not uncommon to many school districts: poor state testing scores, declining enrollment, and a diminishing budget for classroom resources. But that hasn't stopped Lory Stewart, director of instructional technology, from doing everything she can to squeeze out the money necessary for bringing interactive whiteboards into as many classrooms as possible.
Although it's too early to tell yet, she said she believes the district will see a marked improvement in its middle school math scores as a result.
Stewart describes the Cape Cod district's student population as diverse and highly transient. About a fourth of the population changes every quarter. "We have very opposite ends of the spectrum financially.... Real estate values are very high, but we have students who are very poor--who live in campgrounds in the summer and hotels in the winter."
Much of the challenge in meeting its annual AYP--adequate yearly progress--is owing to poor test scores among the district's special education population. "We're not bringing them along as far as we should," said Stewart.

A Math Epiphany

The district's adoption of a new approach to teaching math started when Stewart attended the annual Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference three years ago. She sat through a session about interactive whiteboards, which showed the use of RM Math Framework, math software from RM Education.
"I was wowed," she recalled. "I asked a few questions. I got up. I walked out of the room. I stood outside the door for 10 seconds. And I turned on my heel and went back in and sat down for another session. It completely captivated me."
An understanding of its power occurred for her, Stewart said, when a 45-degree acute angle was shown up on the screen as part of the demo. "It's flashing to me in red. Then all of a sudden, up comes the rest of the circle in blue, flashing the arc around the balance of the circle. The light went on for this 57-year-old woman. An angle is only that portion of a circle. It's all working on the circle being 360 degrees."
She returned to work and told the director of instruction, "This [is] the best thing I've ever seen in my life." They requested a Web demo by the company, which happens to have a United States office 20 minutes from Stewart's district offices.
Then a group from the district visited middle school math classes in another district that had adopted the software that same year. "We came home that day," said Stewart, "and said, 'OK, that's the route we're going too.'"

Click HERE for the full article

RM Math Framework Edition

RM Math Framework Edition is a whole-class teaching system which utilizes interactive whiteboard technology to deliver a dynamic, highly visual and standards-aligned middle school math curriculum.
Consisting of more than 2,000 high-quality math activities which are aligned to both NCTM and State-based curriculum learning standards as well as powerful teaching and planning tools, RM Math Framework Edition can transform classroom instruction, engage and motivate students, and help you to focus teaching and learning closely around State-based learning standards.
RM Math Framework Edition is different from many other information technology-based systems in that it is a whole - class teaching solution. This means that the math teacher remains very much at the center of the instructional process.

For more information on RM Math Framework Edition click HERE

RM Podium V2 Released

RM is pleased to announce the latest version of RM Podium, the dedicated K-12 solution for educational podcasting.
The use of podcasting in the classroom is growing dramatically as educators increasingly see how the benefits of podcasting can extend teaching and learning beyond the classroom.
Current uses of RM Podium is with classroom audio systems where the teacher can hit record and teach the lesson normally and then publish the lesson to enable the students to review back for reinforcement and revision purposes.
Students can use RM Podium to record daily diaries, document fieldwork and work on collaborative projects for review within the school.
School principles can also using RM Podium to release announcements as podcasts for students, parents and the wider community.
RM Podium V2 now offers multi-track recording and editing allowing much broader podcasts to be published. Multiple tracks allow voice on one track, sound effects on another and a music track on another for example, greatly increasing the effectiveness of RM Podium in the classroom and beyond.

To download the latest 30 demo version of RM Podium, click HERE

New RM Easiteach 3.4 Video Presentation

RM Easiteach V3.4 is now available. For more information on the features and benefits of using RM Easiteach on your Interactive Whiteboard, Bluetooth or RF Wireless Slate or your Projector/Document Camera, please click on the RM Easiteach Logo above.

Please click HERE to view video.

3.4 New Features

• Widescreen support
• Support for additional handsets:Renaissance ResponderE-instruction RF Gen2Response Card RFGenee
• Vista Support
• Speech engine reverts to standard Microsoft Text to Speech system
• Foreign characters inserted from the Word banks are no longer surrounded by white space – this allows them to be inserted into words.
• Changing the background color on a page now applies that change to any new page added to the document.
• Change default Easiteach file background color to be pastel blue
• Allow users to use the mouse scroll to scroll in Easiteach
• The erase tool can now be used to erase parts of lines
• Support (via object dialog) to enable Metafiles to be marked as Anti-Aliased to give a smoother appearance.
• A transparent-fill option has been added to the color palette
• Skins updated to include standard extra buttons on the right hand edge of the frame
• Allow the user to see a thumbnail of each Easiteach page without opening them – if they hover over the page number the thumbnail appears.

RM Podium Video Presentation

RM is pleased to announce a new on-line video that helps explain the benefits of Podcasting in the K-12 classroom and how RM Podium can help both students and teachers podcast with a high degree of success.

Please click HERE to view video.

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