As the crow flies, the moon is about 240,000 miles from Jenny Alvey’s class at Knoxville’s Gresham Middle School. But thanks to an “Oreo Moon Phase Lab” podcast lesson prepared by Alvey’s technology-savvy sixth-graders, students at Gresham have lunar images at their fingertips. It’s another example of fun and innovative learning by students in Alvey’s class, which was the winner of last year’s inaugural Oak Ridge Associated Universities’ Extreme Classroom Makeover.

The lesson was prepared by 30 precocious students in the Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) class—a class to help students “go beyond and above” and become future leaders.

“They’ve never done this, ever,” said Alvey. “They’re learning the technical side behind making a podcast and they will teach all of their classmates how to do it. This is going to be posted on my classroom Web site.”

During the visual portion of the lab, students demonstrated the different phases of the moon by manipulating the icing on Oreo cookies. There’s a potential side benefit to the exercise as students may eat any broken Oreos—at the discretion of the teachers, of course!

Students then prepared a step-by-step sequence of events to write the script for their podcast, which will show the other 140 sixth-graders at Gresham how to set up the lab. Finally, students learned voice-editing techniques to create the audio portion of the podcast.

“This makes learning a lot more fun than usual,” said 13-year-old Tony Xing, who said the technologically enhanced classroom has piqued his interest in science. “In elementary school I hated science. I was really excited to start school this year. When I grow up I might like want to be an astronaut—I like to explore.”

Megan Munsey and Lucas Davis, the other two members of Xing’s team, agreed that the marriage of technology and school work makes learning more enjoyable.

“You get to use stuff like podcasts instead of just opening up a book,” said the 12-year-old Davis.

“It makes everything easier to understand—and she (Alvey) makes it really easy to understand,” said Munsey, 11, who said she wants to be a science teacher.

Alvey said the integration of new technologies in the classroom is just as exciting for her as it is for the students.

“I never knew how to make a podcast until now!”

“Super teacher!”

That’s how one fellow educator greeted Jenny Alvey between presentations at the Tennessee Educational Technology Conference in Nashville where Alvey led seminars on Thursday, Dec. 3 and Friday, Dec. 4 at the Nashville Convention Center.

Alvey smiled but waved off the compliment. “I’m still new at all of this,” she said.

She might be a newbie, but word has traveled fast about Alvey. As the recipient of Oak Ridge Associated Universities’ (ORAU) first ever Extreme Classroom Makeover, she has been teaching her 6th-grade science students in a transformed classroom at Knoxville’s Gresham Middle School since the 2009-10 school year began in late August.

The statewide conference—sponsored by the Tennessee Department of Education—was Alvey’s first chance to share with a large audience the leading-edge tools in her arsenal, particularly Promethean’s ActiveExpression board system.

In addition to leading two presentations, Alvey also demonstrated ActiveExpression during the two-day vendor fair.

“This has been great,” she said. “I’ve learned so much. I had a basic understanding of how to use these tools, but being here I’ve gotten lots of new ideas.”

Make no mistake: Alvey also gave away lots of new ideas to teachers who visited the booth or sat in on her sessions. Several attendees had just received an ActivExpression board and were soaking in her knowledge about its power to engage students in lessons, quizzes and fun activities. Several others had not seen the board before but went back home eager to advocate for it in their schools.

Thomas Trenkler, a related-arts teacher in Nashville, has had a board for a year—but he was learning from Alvey. “She has clearly put in the time and energy necessary to make this tool work in her high-tech classroom, and it’s obvious that her students are benefiting,” he said.

The most “oohs” and “ahhs” Alvey received followed her demonstrations of the ActivExpression’s on-screen attendance chart (students drag their name into a shark’s mouth to indicate “present” each morning), recording function (she can pre-record exam questions, for example), and the “Hot Seat” game (a team quiz race).

Sixth-graders in Jenny Alvey’s fourth-period science class are using their new extreme classroom at Knox County’s Gresham Middle School to help them aim as high as the moon—and beyond.

Using NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) as the focus, Alvey’s students prepared a presentation and activity for Gresham Middle School’s “Super Stellar Space Spectacular.” It was the day before the school-wide event and Alvey’s students were preparing to demonstrate a combined high-tech presentation and hands-on activity for their fellow classmates and parents.

The lesson began with Alvey using the Promethean board to show images from a recent NASA unmanned lunar mission—an accomplishment considered a vital first step toward returning to the moon where no human has walked this century.

After viewing the images, Alvey challenged her students to recreate three-dimensional replicas of the space probe using unlikely materials such as taco shells, graham crackers, soda straws and macaroni bits. Marshmallow creme provided adhesive.

“Omigosh, you just dissolved it!” one student cried, as his group’s precariously crafted LRO model collapsed onto its base.

Models were just one aspect of a more elaborate, high-tech presentation. Alvey used her high-tech classroom to demonstrate how the LRO gathers data on topography and lunar resources for future astronauts to use in building a moon base for more ambitious missions to Mars. The students then used laptops and the ActivExpression clicker response system to produce the final presentation.

So what did students glean from their high-tech/low-tech learning? Alvey said:

“The whole point was to have fun with it. It was messy!” she noted as students scrubbed sticky tables and fingers. “But now we better understand what goes into making an LRO.

“The culmination of your project,” she told her students, “comes when you show others how to make an LRO.”

Her other science classes will use the extreme classroom for such projects as a Solar System Café where students will study each planet using facts learned in clever menus for a celestial café.

“After three months’ using this extreme classroom,” Alvey said, “I’m not sure how we got along without it.”

Used to be that Gresham Middle School’s Room 309 was just another science classroom — attractive, colorful and equipped with a modest pair of aging PCs and a chart of the scientific method on the wall. Hardly exceptional.

But that old science room now exists only in memory.

After more than a month spent using the high-technology features of their new classroom, compliments of ORAU, students in Ms. Jenny Alvey’s five, sixth-grade science classes seemed unanimous in their assessment. They praised Alvey’s totally-revamped “extreme classroom” and its cutting-edge learning system.

Student Daisha Nicely promptly pronounced the newly configured classroom “awesome.”

Student Rene Wells noted in Alvey’s new Extreme Classroom blog: “Your class is my favorite room. You deserve this classroom… you’re a great teacher!”

Students, responding to Alvey’s prompts on her blog, said they found the  iPod Touch  devices fun to use in conjunction with the Promethean ActivBoard, an interactive whiteboard.  Students use the iPod Touch devices to watch science videos, conduct internet searches, and run interactive applications and educational games.

Students Stephen Trewhitt and Anne Lindsey Cummings echoed praise for the extreme classroom. They especially enjoyed an ActivBoard activity called “feeding the shark,” a tool for taking attendance in which students move their name into the mouth of a shark to mark themselves “present.”

Student Taylor Pritchett agreed using the ActivBoard offered “a better way of taking attendance.”

And student Jahyla Lopez told Alvey that using ActivExpressions gear to take tests was “so cool! It was just like taking a written test, but better, bigger and a lot more fun!” Student Alyson Benusches agreed, saying: “If we’d taken the test on paper, it would’ve been boring. This way, it was fun!”

Student Trevor Stanley, who enjoyed a different interactive whiteboard setup, called a SMART Board, in his Ritta Elementary 5^th grade class before moving to Gresham, was pleased to learn Alvey’s classroom had a similar feature and many other technology enhancements. “Science is my favorite class. I like tech stuff,” said Stanley.

Student Keeley Yeary could hardly wait to use the iPod Touches and ActivBoard even for daily activities like creating agendas and answering the daily “starter question” Alvey posts each morning to get students thinking about the day’s lessons.

Student Christine Owens called the classroom’s new ActivExpressions response system remotes a “brilliant idea.” Student Taylor Watkin liked using them to record responses to Alvey’s questions, which can be created during a lesson on the ActivBoard, and then made into a quiz over the material at the end of class. Alvey then uses the ActivBoard data-analysis application to check the students’ ActivExpression answers and assess what materials students have not mastered during class.

Student Chad Cooper, who noted he enjoys science, said: “I love to watch weather changing the face of the earth” by channeling various weather-related Web sites into the ActivBoard.

Student Jordan Patterson was pleased to find her classroom “creative and colorful,” and Lopez called it a “really awesome thing that you can have fun and learn at the same time.”

By September, Alvey saw how heavily students would use the iPod Touches. She asked parents to sponsor protective covers, so the units would last longer and benefit more students. As her new year has begun to get into full swing, Alvey’s kids are really enthused about the learning efforts.

“I love my science class now,” said student Chris Carter. “If I could, I’d just stay in there!”

Had Gresham Middle School teacher Jenny Alvey not witnessed the gradual transformation of her sixth-grade science classroom all summer, she might not have recognized her once-familiar surroundings. The transformation came as a result of a $25K Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU)-sponsored Extreme Classroom Makeover, which was awarded to Alvey in May.

On August 13, ORAU returned to Gresham to host an official “reveal” of Alvey’s new classroom for her previous and incoming students, their parents and the public. In true “Ty Pennington-Extreme Makeover” style, Knox County schools superintendent Dr. James McIntyre, Gresham Principal Donna Parker, ORAU’s Homer Fisher and a crowd of students yelled, “Move that bus” as a big yellow school bus was moved forward to reveal the entrance to the new classroom. Alvey was at the door waving everyone in, and the students ran to see their new space.

Student Makayla Wolford said she “couldn’t wait to use the podcast and iPods.”

Some students posted their impressions of the classroom on Alvey’s new blog.

Student Aaron Cate wrote in Alvey’s blog that he “loved [her] new room;” and parent Tina Davis, mother of Lucas Davis, called the classroom “amazing.”

“Lucas,” she said, “can’t wait to be in your classroom to use the devices.”

Alvey said, “Two weeks ago, I thought this might not happen. Then it all came together.” A summer conference helped her merge lesson plans with extreme classroom features. She thanked ORAU, the district and Gresham Principal Donna Parker for support, as well as Paul Awtrey and David Dixon who aided installation and taught her skills.

“Now, we’re ahead of the curve,” she said at the Aug. 13 unveiling.

Alvey beamed while demonstrating classroom capabilities for Dr. McIntyre, her former students and rising sixth-graders. Using the Promethean board that dominates one wall of her classroom, Alvey screened an astronomy question. Students used cellphone-sized “student-response” clickers to guess whether Titan was a moon of Jupiter, Pluto or Saturn. One-third correctly chose Saturn.

Homer Fisher, ORAU’s senior advisor to the president,  called the renovation “an example of how technology can improve learning.” ORAU was proud to support Knox County schools, he said. Dr. McIntyre commended ORAU’s generosity and congratulated Alvey.

“The makeover lets us see what a technologically advanced classroom looks like,” he said. “This gives us great opportunity to see what’s possible, what works well.”

Makeover beneficiaries include Nathan Rupeka, who enjoyed Alvey’s preview with his father, Tim Rupeka. Nathan felt lucky to enjoy a makeover won by Alvey’s previous class.

Students examining Alvey’s new PCs included Evan Hamilton and Josh Smith, rising seventh-graders from the science class that helped produce Alvey’s winning video entry.

“This is so cool!” they told Alvey.

Enjoying the session was Michael Venusches, an eighth-grader who’d never seen such lightweight keyboards. Classroom gear includes 25 iTouches and two high-tech “Macairport routers” that make Alvey’s classroom “totally wireless.”

Dr. Elizabeth Alves, Knox County middle schools director, called Alvey’s students part of a technologically savvy generation.

“This is absolutely their world,” said Alves. “They spend lots of time texting, using computers. Until now, they’ve had to power down when they came to school.” An extreme classroom, she said, lets students “use technology at the point of learning. That shifts the whole process from teacher-directed to student-based learning.”

A before photo of Alvey’s classroom showed desks in neat rows, spheres hung to represent a scorching sun and cool blue earth. A bulletin board listed scientific method steps — from forming a hypothesis to evaluating results and formulating a conclusion.

Those principles remain prominently displayed in her new extreme classroom. Alvey knows the basics of science haven’t changed. But her methods of teaching them just did!

Jenny Alvey, a Gresham Middle School sixth-grade science teacher in Knoxville’s Fountain City community, breathed a sigh of relief once her classes resumed for the new school year. Or perhaps she could finally catch her breath from her fast-paced summer!

Some teachers enjoy leisurely vacation travel or relax on some beach. Not Alvey. A Tennessee Tech University graduate in her sixth year of teaching and a busy mother of a 3-year old son, Alvey spent her summer parenting, coaching volleyball, attending teacher conferences — and oh, yes! — revamping her entire classroom within the 1931-vintage school.

With help from Oak Ridge Associated Universities’ (ORAU) $25,000 Extreme Classroom Makeover and assistance from the Knox County School District (KCSD), she’s seen her conventional classroom morph quickly into a high-tech learning center with a Promethean touch-screen dwarfing one wall. Part of ORAU’s mission includes making sciences, engineering and math more attractive for young students, and that concept fueled the organization’s first-ever makeover competition.

This past spring, Alvey’s sixth-graders bested students from 20 schools in producing a video detailing just why their class would most benefit from an “extreme” high-tech classroom makeover, and in May, they got word of their win in a big way. A large group of ORAU representatives, Gresham Principal Donna Parker, Knox County Schools Superintendent Jim McIntyre and a host of photographers and videographers sneaked into Alvey’s classroom to surprise her and her students with flowers, balloons, banners, shirts, and news of their big win.

Now, a new crop of sixth-graders in her five daily classes will benefit from a bright, new space transfigured, literally, from the ground up.

This summer, as Alvey worked with ORAU to select and purchase the latest technologies that would help her engage the minds of her students, KCSD workers were transforming the physical classroom —installing floor tiles, building cabinets and remodeling a shower stall for secure storage.

When Alvey stopped by to check on installation of her new tile floor, a harsh surprise awaited her. As she entered her classroom, she discovered workers had applied a floor tile adhesive, but no tiles. So her shoes stuck fast to the adhesive and Alvey became affixed to a gooey floor.

Gresham Principal Donna Parker said she’d always known Alvey was attached to her students, but she hadn’t realized that firm attachment also included the floor! Parker didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when she saw Alvey’s predicament. Once the whole thing was over, both laughed heartily, but Alvey asked, good-naturedly: “Would it have hurt them to have posted a ‘Wet Floor’ sign?”

In July, as a muralist brightened classroom walls by adding “science graffiti,” Alvey took special training enabling her to introduce students to their high-tech milieu. Gresham students now will use cutting-edge technology to learn about the physical sciences in a $25,000 “dream come true” classroom. And, according to Alvey, students’ natural curiosity will create a positive atmosphere for creativity, study and learning.

Most sixth-graders, Alvey said, are familiar with iPods, computers, cell phones, video games, DVD players and camcorders; so they adapt quickly to new equipment. She hopes her classes will start by using the new equipment to perform simple functions like taking the daily roll of attendance.

Alvey invites students and parents alike to use an ORAU-designed blog to help gauge classroom use and learning experiences. ORAU will also assess through an evaluation tool how well students learn using the technology that includes the giant screen, an LCD projector, laptop computers, documenting and digital cameras.

Gresham parents visited the new classroom during an Aug. 13 introductory meeting. Gresham sixth-graders returned to the classrooms Aug. 17.

As the winner, Ms. Alvey will be sharing how she spends the windfall on technology and training to bring her classroom into the 21st century through a blog on this site. Follow along as she picks the equipment and oversees the upgrades to the classroom and begins teaching in the new room during the 2009-10 school year.