It was Lucy, a 63-foot inflatable whale that elementary school students brought with them from West Seneca School District in Erie County. The whale has become a travelling classroom that students take to malls and conventions. The program simulates a submarine trip in which students voyage to the bottom of Lake Ontario, where they can try to identify an 1812 shipwreck and test oil drums for leakage. To add a little drama, a critical part always breaks during the trip, forcing students to machine a replacement using a lathe. More than 10,000 7th and 8th graders will be making the voyage next school year.
Students upload data to the Internet.
They later access the data in their schools and analyze the data, just like scientists doing field research. The project is fully integrated with state and federal learning standards, Cummings said. Emphasis is on problem-solving, critical thinking and teamwork. Other New Yorkers appeared as speakers in several seminars. One was Benjamin Ferrara, a school attorney in Syracuse and a past chairman of the NSBA Council of School Attorneys.