PTA

2007-2008 PTA Committee

Lori Fortner - President
Cindy Werner - Vice-President
Delilah Meade - Treasurer
Tricia Voyles - Secretary
Cyndi Bowling - Membership
Debra Moye - Fundraising

Welcome to Pi Phi's PTA website.

We are very excited about this school year and all it has in store!! We invite you to attend our meetings, share your ideas, and visit this site often. As you use the site, please keep in mind that this is a communication tool for Pi Phi Parents. We welcome you, we appreciate you, and our children need your support. And last but not least, if you are not presently a Pi Phi PTA Member, please join today. Make your voice count.

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Article featured in the Mountain Press

Pi Beta Phi using interactive teaching boards to draw
students into learning with more enthusiasim

By: J.J. KINDRED, Staff Writer August 31, 2007

GATLINBURG - Pi Beta Phi is one of many schools in the county using technology that could change how classroom instruction is done.

Thanks to fund-raising efforts by its PTA, selected classrooms at the school are implementing Promethean Activboards, which help teachers deliver whole-class instruction.
These boards are similar to the SMART Board technology that some county schools currently use. That features a large projector using an interactive whiteboard where students can see colorful, movable images and diagrams, physically interacting with the material by moving items with their fingers or hand-held wand-type devices.
With Promethean Activboards, teachers can also have Internet access as well as show videos.
The boards cost $10,000, and more fund-raising will take place to get more.
According to Promethean's Web site, more than 2.5 million school children in more than 70 countries are using the technology.
"Teachers are using it in all subject areas," said Lisa Bremer, a computer teacher at Pi Beta Phi who headed up the installation.
"They are creating their own lesson plans using their curriculum, and they also use the Promethean Planet, a Web site they go to with charts already created to use with their curriculum in all subjects. It's not just math and science - they use it for physical education, art and computers."
Bremer gave a small demonstration with some of her students.
"They can take a test and the software will grade it, and it tells teachers what percentage of kids got this right and what percentage of something kids need to work on," Bremer said.
"I think it will be the wave of the future. I went to a school in Cleveland, Tenn., and every teacher in the building had a board. They were one of the only schools in that system that made AYP (adequate yearly progress) on everything when it comes to benchmarks and standards."
Seventh-grade students Davis Soehn, Karsen Sims and Grant Fisher are enthusiastic about the technology.
"It makes school more fun, because we get to go up on the board and write," Davis said. "It's more fun than just sitting there writing on a piece of paper."
"Our English homework gets put in on the screen with different backgrounds," Karsen said.
"We can watch a video or something, because if you have to go and eat lunch, you can just pause it and then come back and it's still where it was," Grant said.
Tracy Smith, one of two teachers who has a Promethean board, got to experiment with it last year and said it has helped her and her students. The other boards are in Valerie Dixon's fourth-grade classroom and the school's computer lab.
"It draws kids into the lesson and they want to participate," said Smith, who teaches sixth-grade language arts and math. "We use it for the whole group, a small group, and programs we already have."
"The kids are excited," Bremer said. "They want to get up on the board. Teachers can tell their stories and books can highlight characters and settings. It's just a different way of learning. In this technology, game-based generation, they love it."
* jkindred@themountainpress.com

@The Mountain Press 2007

2006 - 2007 PTA Calendar