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MIDDLETOWN — As a result of donations made by several corporations and individuals, eight interactive whiteboards will be installed in classrooms of Middletown High School Advanced Placement teachers.
The Polyvision Eno whiteboards, which cost $3,300 each, are scheduled to be installed in eight classrooms at the high school on Oct. 19-20, said Adriane Scherrer, founder of We-Can Business Incubator, who helped secure the donations to purchase the equipment.
Scherrer and Dan Tracy, owner of Pest Off Exterminators, recently launched an initiative to obtain grants, and corporate and personal donations to place more whiteboards in MHS classrooms.
They received about $20,000 in donations from the Middletown Community Foundation, the Barnitz Fund, the Middletown Rotary Club Foundation and the Xi Lambda Pi-Beta Sigma Phi Sorority in Middletown, she said.
Tracy, a 1996 MHS graduate, and his wife, Ruthann, and Polyvision, also donated two whiteboards each, Scherrer said.
Scherrer said they plan to continue fundraising efforts to purchase 12 more whiteboards to install in classrooms at the high school by 2012.
“I want to challenge other corporations to step up to the plate and make donations as well,” she said.
“We’re not going to quit until every student has a teacher that will use the board ... we’re going to keep on until he or she has one.”
Residents and business owners can contribute by donating to the “MHS Eno Board Project” account at Middletown Chase Bank or send donations to the We-Can Business Incubator, in care of MHS Eno Board Project, 1015 Central Ave., Middletown, Ohio, 45044, which also will be placed in the bank account.
Betsy Carter, Middletown Schools senior director of learning, said the district appreciates Scherrer, Tracy and the community’s efforts to help bring this interactive technology to the high school.
“That gives the high school a pretty good influx of technology. It’s very helpful. We have a large number of (whiteboards) now throughout the district, and every single building has them in most of their classrooms,” she said.
“The purpose is to help our teachers learn to integrate this in their lessons. The technology shouldn’t be an add on; it should be just a natural flow within a lesson. It should just make natural sense when you’re doing a particular lesson that you pull this particular resource up or pull this particular diagram up that you can do an activity with.”
The high school has two interactive whiteboards, which are used in two Butler Tech classrooms at the school.
All elementary classrooms in Middletown have Eno boards, said district officials.
The district was able to install about 275 boards through a federal Reading First grant, though the grant only permitted the district to do so at the elementary level.
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