By: Joseph Kellard
"Every day is a new adventure in here, and I'm getting used to it, and finding my way around," Ott said, leaning against a wood-metal shop table with nary a scratch on its new surface. "We're going through a learning curve."
Part of Ott's and fellow technology teacher John Mancuso's education included taking courses on the modulation stations in the adjoining ScanTEK room. The year-long ScanTEK program offers students an introduction to 18 technological fields. Each student spends 10 total hours at each module, which comes complete with computers, work books and peripheral materials that help students solve problems and perform exercises and experiments.
The alternative energy module, for example, includes a fan to teach students about wind power; the construction technologies station sports a model skyscraper atop an earthquake simulator so they can learn about movement and weights. Other modules range from basic electricity to automotive technology to digital sound, photography and video.
"This program gives students the fundamentals of these technologies," Ott explained, pointing out that it can guide them toward more specific BOCES programs.
The program also indirectly provides concrete applications of mathematics for students who may not be particularly adept in the subject, Ott believes. A toy-gun-like altitude finder at the space technology module, for instance, ties into trigonometry, and gear alignments at the mechanisms' station play into simpler math.
"A lot of kids come in here thinking they can do this or that without learning certain kinds of math," Ott said. "And they come to understand that, say, with architecture, the design of the building is just a small aspect of the field. So, this program helps opens their eyes to that."
Ott, too, has opened his eyes to what he must learn so his students get the most out of the program, and that means getting to know better both the ScanTEK room and the condenses metal-wood shop that was originally separate rooms. The old shops were larger, but equipment was arranged haphazardly. Today, while teachers and students work with less room, the shop is laid out to make their operations run more smoothly. In part, that's because teachers provided input into their design, so now hand-related equipment and materials are grouped on one side of the shop, while new machines - a band saw, grinder, lathe and drill presses -- are opposite them.
"It's a limited amount of space, but it's a better use of space," said Ott, standing underneath encased 25-foot electrical cords, suspending from the ceiling, which allow students to move around with hand-held tools. "We have a lot of flexibility to what we can do and where we can do it. It really does increase your capabilities that we didn't have in the past."
In the resource and research lab rooms once located upstairs in the south wing, limited space was an issue, as was the two computers students shared between the rooms. In the two new rooms, with their cheery-wood, black-top tables, 16 Dell computers are divided between them. In various ways, these rooms allow science coordinator Renee Barcia and research teachers Maureen Bodkin and Lisa Mehr to better educate their students.
A projector installed on the resource room's ceiling, for example, lets students create their own power-point presentations and display scientific videos, DVDs and computer-downloaded materials.
Further, a telecommunications system will provide an opportunity for students to work with their peers throughout the nation on a particle physics project conducted at Brookhaven lab. And the resource room's greater space also makes welcoming in speakers more inviting. Recently, a professor from Montclair State University gladly gave a lecture there on epidemiology.
"He was very pleased that he didn't have to lug all his equipment here," Barcia said. "And in addition to our equipment, the new room is set up to be much more conducive to hosting speakers."
The adjacent research room is geared toward ninth-grade physics and chemistry students, and features 16 compound microscopes, a flex cam to project microscopic work on screen, and, like the metal-wood shop, encased electrical cords allow for greater work flexibility.
These four rooms were made possible by a 20-year $31 million bond for district-wide renovations and upgrades that Oceanside School District residents approved in January 2003. $1.5 million from this bond was budgeted toward the ScanTEK rooms and their programs.
"The district has been very good to us," said Ed Wilensky, chairman of the science and technology department at OHS. "They all worked with us to get these rooms and the programs installed so that we did it the right way."
