BIG › IDEAS
Innovative Local School Districts Host Leaders from Throughout the Country
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wo of Butler County’s most innovative school districts played hosts to hundreds of school leaders and teachers visiting from around the nation, showing off their digitally focused learning programs. The League members represent 125 districts in 34 states serving more than 3.8 million students, and Middletown and Lakota are among the few area districts to seek and earn digital learning certification to be of the national organization. For school leaders from Ohio and out of state touring Middletown’s Amanda Elementary, that meant many things, including getting to toss some dodge balls around but not at each other. 16
The Middletonian
District officials wanted to show off their “Lu” interactive math projection video game designed to grow both math skills and student athleticism. The virtual reality immersion game, projected onto Amanda’s gym wall, saw the guest educators scrambling like kids to throw the balls at the proper math answers and raking up a winning score as energetic music pumped through speakers.
Schools is to come and see what other folks are doing.”
It left some of the guest players breathless but all of them impressed.
Rebekah Kim, executive director from a Seattle-area school system, said the Middletown schools tour showed her “a lot of student pride in the schools and it’s exciting to see that at a young age.”
Keith Konyk, assistant superintendent from a Pittsburgh-area school system, said these on-site visits to cutting-edge school systems “is the most powerful part of the League of Innovative
“We steal these ideas every time we go on tour and take these things back to our schools. We are really excited about a lot of the ideas we have seen from these meetings,” said Konyk. “The Lu is really amazing and I loved how it keeps kids active,” he said.
“There is a really evident culture of engagement for the teachers
Story Contributed by Journal News
