The Story Behind the Orientation Project
When the school district was awarded a Magnet Grant to develop a special focus for each of its five middle schools, each school developed its program with a focus on a particular discipline. Incoming sixth graders were given the option to choose a middle school that suited their interests. This meant that the schools had to advertise their programs and convince current fifth graders that their middle school was the one to attend.
This school was approached by a staff member from the district office who asked for help with improving the orientation program for incoming sixth graders. Since the school was a center for global communications and information systems, it seemed appropriate that the job of producing the orientation program should go to the media specialists and their students.
The students designed a HyperStudio slide presentation, created a brochure, and produced a five-minute infomercial about their school. The three projects were presented to the district’s fifth graders and their parents at an orientation program in the spring.The written work produced as part of Applied Learning projects commonly contains some errors. Documentation of these projects includes notes, journal entries and plans that students produced as working documents for their personal use. These kinds of documents were not prepared with the expectation of eventual publication and they have not been revised for inclusion in this book.
It is expected that finished work produced as part of an Applied Learning project will contain virtually error free writing.
| This project illustrates a standard-setting
performance for the following parts of the standards: |
|
 c |
Communication: Publish information using several methods and formats. |
 b |
Information: Use information technology. |
What the work shows
c
Communication Tools and Techniques: The student publishes information
using several methods and formats, such as overhead transparencies, handouts,
and computer generated graphs and charts; that is, the student:
- organizes the information into an appropriate form for use in the publication;
- checks the information for accuracy;
- formats the published material so that it achieves its purpose.
As part of their orientation packet, the students produced a number of published products. They created a HyperStudio presentation, a brochure, and a video.
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 The HyperStudio
production is organized appropriately for a presentation of this kind.
It has a title page and a table of contents at the beginning so that
viewers may select whichever topic they are interested in immediately.
The information included in the presentation was checked for accuracy
in the course of a number of revisions. The presentation is effective
in advertising the school to prospective in-coming sixth graders.
It is visually attractive and emphasizes the more entertaining activities
of school life. |
 Click to Enlarge |
 |
 The brochure
looks very professional. It is printed on high-quality paper. The
varying font size, use of white space (which helps readability), and
the overall impression, particularly good for a monochrome brochure,
is one of elegance and quality. The information included in the text
is written in clear, simple prose and is designed to help the new
students to the school feel at ease, e.g., under the advice section
it states, “Don’t be nervous or afraid. Remember this year’s
7th and 8th graders were like you before. So they know how you feel.
Ask them anything.” |
 Click to Enlarge |
All of the materials are effectively designed to achieve their purpose. They are attractive, easy to read, and inviting which, in turn, combine to make the school seem non-threatening and welcoming to new students. |
b
Information Tools and Techniques: The student used information
technology to assist in gathering, analyzing, organizing, and presenting
information; that is, the student:
- acquires information for specific purposes from on-line
sources, such as the Internet, and other electronic data bases, such
as a scientific data base on CD ROM;
- uses word-processing, graphics, data base, and spreadsheet programs to produce project reports and related materials.
These materials provide evidence of students’ facility in using a
variety of programs to organize and present information.