5 Steps to Responsible E-waste Management at Your School By: Caprice Lawless

50 million tons of e-waste is generate each year worldwide. You might be thinking what is e-waste, and why should I care? E-waste stands for Electronic waste and is dumped in landfills each year by millions of people. Landfills are being bombarded by toxic waste that can not be in our landfills. It is toxic to the air that we breathe and submits gases into the air. You should care because e-waste is ruining our planet, and the resources that we have. Recycling programs have taken place worldwide and are getting more popular by the day. There are 5 steps in which you can have responsible e-waste management in schools. Step 1: educating yourself and others about local, national, and international legislation. In California we have passed a Electronic Waste Recycling Act in 2003. This act requires that all retailers to collect a fee from consumers in covered electronic devices. These fees are then submitted and pay for recycling efforts within California. In February 2008 New York became the first U.S. city to pass a mandatory producer-responsibility act. In January 2008 nine states passed a "take-back" law that required manufacturers to collect and recycle e-waste. Internationally the European Union passed two Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) laws. Step 2: investigate recycling options from the companies that sell you equipment. Like Staples, where I work collects used equipment for a fee and then recycles it through a secondary source. Step 3: learn about shredding and sorting and how to certify that recycling is happening. Environmentalists and waste management experts are determining a secondary way for electronic equipment to be dismantled and then recovered elsewhere. This is a long process that will take years to perfect. Step 4: what others are doing. Look to see what your school is doing to help in recycling old or unused electronic devices. Be sure to look carefully due to state laws like in Iowa. In Iowa it is illegal to donate used equipment directly to charity. The item must go on sell, and be sold to the highest bidder, which can be a charity. Also, donating used equipment might appear to be donating to poorer families at the exclusion of a particular group of taxpayers. Making plans and looking into what your state allows and does not allow will keep your school out of trouble. Step 5: put together your plan for responsible e-waste management. Having a plan for recycling in your classroom is a great way for the students to get involved into recycling and what it means to our planet.

I thought that this article was a good way to see what is going on worldwide with recycling. At my work, Staples, we have a program that lets customers bring in their old monitors (free of charge), laptops, printers, speakers, mice, keyboards ($10 each), cell phones, batteries, and toner cartage's (free). I love how my work is helping the environment, and customers like it too. We get a ton of toner cartage's daily, as well as old printers. In my classroom I would set up a recycling bin for used paper, soda cans, and plastics that my students might have. Also, I would want to set up some sort of program where they can bring in their old ink cartage's to me and receive either extra credit or a small prize. I would then take the ink cartage's to a company like Staples and recycle them. At my work we have a Teachers Rewards program that lets teacher recycle 10 ink cartage's a month and receive $3 back on their rewards check. I would take my rewards check that I received for that month and use that to buy school supplies for my classroom as well as my students. I see it as a win-win situation. The students get extra credit or a prize for recycling and then I get supplies for them to use in the classroom. I think that showing students that recycling is fun that they will teach their parents and then they will start recycling at home. My ultimate goal is to be the best teacher I can be and giving my students the knowledge that they will need to make their futures brighter.

Virtual School By: Niki Davis and Dale S. Niederhauser

This article talked about how virtual schooling (VS) in the US is changing the K-12 curriculum. Middle and high schoolers all over the country are participating in Web-based online courses. The 2002-2003 school year approximately 300,000 students participated in VS. By 2006 it was estimated that one million middle and high school students would be participating in the program. The major advantages for virtual schooling stated by The National Educational Technology Plan was to have individually personalized schooling and help schools respond to the No Child Left Behind legislation. Also, that every student had access to e-learning opportunities, and every teacher also had access to e-learning training. Also, students enroll in this program because they gain access to advance placement options, flexible time and place benefits that help students complete coursework and graduate high school. This online learning was also served to students who were place bound or displaced. In Florida free course enrollment was given to students who were affected by Hurricane Katrina, which also included students from Louisiana. The benefits of this program for the lifelong learning are huge to students continuing their learning. April 2006, Michigan became the first state to require an online learning experience for high school graduates. This is a great way to get pre-college bound college students familiar with online courses and experience with the computer and the programs that come with them. Virtual schooling requires a major transformation for teachers and shifts the roles and necessitates of the teacher. The virtual school works like this: the teacher and students do not met in a traditional classroom, instead they communicate and share resources using digital technologies (e.g. e-mail, videoconferencing, and a learning management system such as Blackboard). Students as well as teachers receive support throughout this experience. Local school districts and administrators help both students and teachers with the design of the course. Administrators also play an important role in supporting the VS efforts. They are responsible for recruitment and quality of the courses. The VS site facilitators have the most important role out of all three of VS roles. Their role might be a teacher, administrator, guidance counselor, or aide hired specifically for the purpose. The VS site facilitator communicates with not only students but with teachers and administrators giving them support and advice in what needs to be in the virtual schools. The major challenge for virtual schools in how to prepare teachers for VS. Typically teachers would go out and do field work at schools. Field experience in the VS system is often obscured due to the nature of the program. The VS programs are becoming rapidly popular in today's education system, and everyone needs to be prepared in accepting this new program.


This is an excellent idea for transforming the school and education system. The resources that teachers could use would be limitless in the classroom. I plan on using technology devices in my future classroom. Web cams are relatively inexpensive now a days and every student could afford to invest in one. Enhancing my future students knowledge about technology is a priority that I am making for my classroom. This is an excellent way to expose students to what the technology world can bring into their lives. Of course this would have to be approved my the school and district, but this is a great opportunity for the students.

"Creating Tech Wizards" by: Beth Breiner

A new and exciting program that has students teaching teachers about new technology of the future, has emerged from eastern Pennsylvania called The Technology Wizards. These students are members of the Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit that supports 14 school districts and two career technical schools in Lehigh and Carbon counties. This program was created by Assistant Executive Director Cathy Groller. The creation of this program was sparked by having technology-savvy students who would provide on site sources of tech support to teachers. The first year of the program started with enlisting sixth and seventh graders to ensure the stability and growth. In the second year sixth, seventh, and eighth graders could participate in the program. By the third year of this program the grade levels would extend to sixth through ninth graders. The development of a Tech Wizards Junior program is also underway for elementary school students interested in computers and technology. The Technology Wizards program was fully operational by October 2007. Principals in each school facility were asked to nominate one to two faculty members as teacher advisors for this program. Faculty members were then asked to nominate students as well. The criteria for students to enter the program was to demonstrate a proclivity for technology and agree to participate in, and at times lead professional development training sessions for teachers. By the first year 26 sixth and seventh graders participated in this program. Students and advisers met once a month from November through May at the Intermediate Unit to train. Six of the school districts participated in the program using PCs, where the other two districts used Mac-based systems. It was very important that the program content would be delivered in a way that would model the very best practices for the educational theories. An example of this was that students in both the PC and Mac sessions had to create a one-minute persuasive commercial that would convince teachers of the benefits of using multimedia in the classroom. The students went to work and the teacher advisors were amazed in how well the students were learning and picking up the new technologies. By the end of the session students identified three new things that they learned and how they had learned them, and two things they still wanted to learn about. Students then took what they had learned back to their home classroom and the technology knowledge raised the roof in eastern Pennsylvania. This program is a huge success and others are developing all over the country.

I would use this technique in my classroom all of the time. This is such a great and interesting way to get students involved in technology. Having students teach other students and teachers is a great way for everyone to learn. Teachers learn new and exciting things from their students all of the time, why can it not be about technology. I believe that if this program were to be established in the San Diego school districts everyone would benefit from the programs educational ideas. I know that if I was a sixth or seventh grader I would definitely want to take this class and learn new things about the computer and how to use different applications on the computer. Especially how computers are in our everyday lives, knowing how to operate this technology will further launch education in the years to come. All in all The Technology Wizards program may start a trend that will overcome the rest of the countries school districts and facilitate a new way of teaching and learning for students.

Online chatting for schools

"Chatting It Up Online" by Pamela Livingston

In this article Mrs. Livingston, a third grade teacher at an all boys school at Chestnut Hill Academy, organized a live video chat with an author that her class was reading at the time. The author was Mary Pope Osborne who wrote the Magic Treehouse series. The chat was through Random House Children's Media Group and Talk City, Inc. Mrs. Livingston and other third and second grade teachers jumped at this opportunity and signed up for The classes submitted questions that were interesting and relevant to the author. The teachers overlooked the questions and submitted them to the company. Heavy planning before the chat happened to make sure the school and technical equipment worked together so nothing would interrupt the chat while it was going on. As aspects everything went great and the Internet chat was a huge success for the teachers and students. Teachers found that the chat was much more satisfying to the students than traditional writing a letter to the author and then waiting four months for a response. This way the students can see the person in real time and have their questions answered in a much more timely manner. With this experiment so successful this school and others will start finding new ways for their students to come interested in reading. this interesting way to enhance students' reading.

In my classroom students will have the opportunity as these boys did to have internet chats with authors and famous peolpe who are willing to talk to studnets. Having learned the material first studnets can understand the information more clearly when going into a internet chat. Doing the lesson plan before hand will give my students the upper hand and gain more knowledge than studnets who do not. Having this type of technology in the classroom students can find ways they might learn better than with traditional teaching techniques. Helping others to gain this knowledge is also a great trait to have in a students' character. Also, parents of my students will be very happy and pleased that their son or daughter is having such a unique and interesting experience at school. Some parents might want to find other ways through technology to enhance their child's performance which makes them a better student and ultimately a better person.

The NESTS for this artcle is NETS.S: 4; NESTS.T: II, III.