SSMS To Pilot Earth Science E-Portal System

When school starts in September, eighth grade Earth Science students at South Side Middle School will have a brand new digital experience.

Thanks to a $3,000 e-portal system — created in collaboration with educational publisher Gale Cengage and tailored to the Regents curriculum — middle schoolers this year will have digital access to magazines, newspaper articles, videos and podcasts to supplement their learning.

According to Chris Pellettieri, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction for Rockville Centre, the portal will be piloted in the 2010-11 school year, but it will not replace textbooks just yet.

"This is crucial to getting kids more and more involved in school,"  Pellettieri said. "They are used to going online to look for information and now they'll be able to do that with their schoolwork."

Through the portal, students can also access speech to text programs which can translate material into eight different languages, he said. Teachers will have access to uploading their own course materials to the portal, Pellettieri explained, which is updated every 24 hours. Rockville Centre is currently the only district on Long Island offering such a program, he noted.

Pellettieri pointed out that the downside to traditional textbooks is that they are not updated quick enough to reflect current events. He cited the recent Gulf Coast oil spill as an example of an issue that students can learn about using the portal since it is too recent of an event to be addressed in textbooks. "Now imagine the ability to use this to learn about every single topic in Earth Science," Pellettieri said.

A benefit to implementing the e-portal system throughout the district is that it costs less than textbooks, said School Superintendent Dr. William Johnson. "I think we need to take a look at this possibility because of the reduced cost and rich curriculum opportunity that it provides," he said. "This is the technology that kids and their parents are using at home."

Pellettieri said there will be some upcoming  challenges with the portal, in particular with students who don't have computers at home, but he is confident that the pilot is a step in the right direction.

"Perhaps in the future we'll give students iPads, netbooks and tablets to replace textbooks and notebooks," Pellettieri said. "This is the way our society is going and we are going to prepare kids for college this way."