NMS Open House Highlights Tech Ed Students And GATES

By Eliza Hallabeck

With Gifted and Talented Education Students (GATES) assembled in the Newtown Middle School lobby, this quarter’s technology education students venturing around instructor Don Ramsey’s room to view the latest architecture projects with family and friends, and educational assistant Tyler Von Oy walking around the school on stilts, the middle school was open to parents on Wednesday, June 14.

The technology education classroom was full of projects from students who designed architectural models that focused on “safe characteristics” of a shelter. This quarter’s student projects included a pyramid, a roller coaster, and the Newtown Meeting House.

Mr Ramsey said the student work spoke for itself, and showed how this rotation’s students did not fall victim to “spring fever” and relax on their educational efforts. He said the room was filled with “all kinds of tremendous models.”

In the school’s lobby GATES members displayed projects they created during the 2010-11 academic year. Eighth grade student Baxter Hankin displayed his group’s entry into the School Building Week’s School of the Future Design Competition, sponsored by the National Association of Realtors in partnership with the Council of Educational Facilities Planners, International.

GATES member Trevor Gaines shared an untitled music composition her wrote with visitors, while GATES member Brendan Gregory shared iPad and iPhone applications he created over the course of the year. One app, he said, was designed to be a calculator, a unit converter, and a countdown system all in one.

As students displayed their projects and looked through the different architecture models created by technology education students, Mr Von Oy walked around the building on Powerisers, a brand of sports stilts that can help the user run at speeds of up to 20 to 25 miles per hour, according to Mr Von Oy. His pair cost roughly $375, and after speaking with Mr Ramsey about his new purchase, Mr Von Oy decided to wear the stride-enhancing stilts during the school’s open house.

“Normally,” said Mr Von Oy, after being asked what people think of his newest purchase, “the first response is, ‘Wow. You’re tall.’”

Bringing the stilts into the school, Mr Von Oy said, allowed him to teach students a physics lesson.

Mr Ramsey said Mr Von Oy has been helping in his classroom all year, along with his other duties as an educational zssistant at the school. Mr Ramsey called Mr Von Oy a “true renaissance man.”

Over the year Mr Von Oy has created a hand cranked electro magnet, a musical slide pipe, and other objects that were used as teaching tools in Mr Ramsey’s classroom.

Mr Von Oy also a track and field coach at NMS and Newtown High School.