September 2007 — Hardware
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A vRoom With a View
The program allows students in the performing arts academy to meet with artists whom, because of time and distance constraints, they otherwise would not have been able to speak with. A case in point was the three-day run the musical Rent had in Charlotte back in January. "We only had three hours to work with," Moncrief says. "The students used the platform to ask questions and have a dialogue with the cast members."
Students show equal enthusiasm for the technology. "I think vRoom helped me learn because it showed me what real surgery looks like," says Erica Torres, a student in the medical sciences academy. "After all the reading we do, and all the terminology we have to learn, it's nice to see how it is implemented in the actual surgical setting. Since we could not go to the surgery, the surgery came to us. Even though some girls became a little nauseated, I still enjoyed the experience."
The Central Academy program is an offshoot of a statewide project-based learning initiative developed in 2003 through the office of Gov. Mike Easley to ready the state to do business globally, Moncrief says. According to its website, the initiative, called North Carolina in the World, seeks to strengthen K-12 international education through collaboration with business leaders and policymakers, teaching students about other cultures and equipping them to compete in the global marketplace.
Part of the impetus for the initiative was North Carolina's broad international presence. The state has trade offices in Canada, Mexico, Germany, South Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong. Moncrief says that some of those locations are featured in the education programs developed by the University of North Carolina's Center for International Understanding, a partner in North Carolina in the World, and offered as part of the initiative.
In one project, conducted through the North Carolina Virtual Public School, the students worked with students in Mexico, conducting research and then discussing the results. Rather than being an alternative to attending a public high school full time, NCVPS augments a student's regular course of study, providing courses that students are unable to take at their local schools. For example, the site offers advanced placement courses and honors courses, as well as career and technical education courses such as business law, parenting and child development, and digital communications.
In another project that linked the school with students in Mexico, students in both countries discussed the folklorebased designs of Talavera pottery, which comes from Puebla, Mexico. The US kids received pieces of the pottery after their first firing, painted them, discussed their designs with the students in Mexico, and then sent back their creations. "They did it all collaboratively," Moncrief says, adding that he plans to continue the project this year with a new crop of students.
