Technology Integration Specialist Dana Gropper and Jaclyn Ellefsen enrich classes with innovative resources

Classrooms throughout the Washingtonville Central School District have been enhanced with technical resources such as laptops to help engage students with the curriculum. Jaclyn Ellefsen and Dana Gropper, Technology Integration Specialist for the District, offer a variety of resources for scholars and teachers to utilize and bring technology into their education.

Ms. Gropper and Ms. Ellefsen offer a plethora of services to faculty and students throughout the District. These include instructing teachers on the best practices for integrating technology into their classrooms, showing educators how to facilitate technology tools, collaborating with staff to create lesson plans including technology and sharing the importance of using technology in an academic setting. 

“We go over the importance of the use of technology in an academic matter with students, so they understand what it is to be a digital citizen,” said Ms. Gropper. “There’s all these new standards that are supposed to be fully implemented starting next year. Students have standards they’re supposed to learn throughout their K-12. We are teaching students that technology is more than gaming and all of that, that there’s academic and professional purposes for the use of technology.”  

Throughout the year, Ms. Gropper and Ms. Ellefsen have utilized tools such as robotics to get scholars excited about what they are learning in the classroom. Recently, Ms. Gropper worked with a fourth-grade class to create interactive posters to learn about historic explorers. Students used a combination of circuits and coding to record themselves speaking about the explorers for their posters. 

The two also assist classes who participate in Project Lead the Way, a STEAM-based curriculum for elementary, middle and high school students. Here, they support staff who might need additional guidance fusing technology into their curriculum. They assist by walking through the lesson before it is taught and brainstorming innovative projects for students to execute.