Intel Education - An Innovation Odyssey Day 83

KILKEE, County Clare, Ireland—True or false?

Ireland produces some of the safest food products in the world.

It's not safe to serve hot gravy with cold meat.

Cutting knives never wear out.

Teenagers in rural Kilkee not only know the correct answers (true, true, false). They've also guided fellow students to a better understanding of food safety by creating an interactive food science tutorial. The electronic tutorial comes complete with a true/false quiz that rewards correct responses with a chime, but blasts errors with a laser.

Geraldine McWeeney teaches in Kilkee's small Community College, where nearly 90 percent of students progress to university studies. Her fourth-year students range in age from 14 to 17 and speak Irish, English, French, and German.

"As recently as three years ago," the teacher admits, "I could not switch on a computer." But post-graduate studies in technology in education have taken her far in a short time. Now, she routinely helps students use various computer applications, making use of the school's new networked computer lab featuring 20 workstations.

For the food safety project, she started by having students turn their Internet research into storyboards for what would eventually become multimedia slideshows. Using presentation software, they developed the slides. Graphics software enabled them to create, import, and edit graphics. The true/false sound effects came into play when students learned to create music and voice files to add to their presentations.

Using sound-editing software, students added their own narrative voices to the tutorial. "It was interesting how many times students rerecorded their own voices," McWeeney notes. "They became very critical of their own performance when they realized they'd be recorded on a piece of software." Knowing that students in home economics classes would be listening to their final product helped to motivate the technology students to keep going until they got it right.

In addition to enhancing teaching and learning, the technology unit is striving towards several other goals: improving learning for the slow learner as well as the gifted one, motivating students, and communicating with other students nationally and internationally.

Each year, students from Kilkee trade places for a week with students in France. Now that Kilkee students are more adept at using technology, chances are they'll be staying connected electronically with the other exchange students. And if the French kids need any food safety tips, they'll know just where to go for a quick tutorial.

Visit the Food Safety Authority of Ireland site*.

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