New computers at Mount Carmel make camp fun

Fifth- through ninth-grade girls used Flip cameras to make music videos  and learned editing in iMovie during one of Mount Carmel Academy’s week-long summer camps sessions. Mount Carmel Academy recently upgraded its computer lab and added 78 new iMAC computers, which the campers were the first to try out.

Photos | COURTESY  MOUNT CARMEL ACADEMY

    Mount Carmel Academy’s computer labs are getting a makeover, and summer campers enrolled in MCA’s Adventures in Digital Filmmaking are among the first to take the new computers for test runs. The early reviews are glowing.
    MCA’s college coordinator Betsy Stangel, whose office abuts a new Macintosh lab with 25 iMac computers sporting 21-inch monitors, overhears the daily buzz.
    “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the word ‘cool’ already this summer,” she said. “And that’s from the counselors as well as the campers.”
    Teachers, meanwhile, each received parting gifts before being dismissed for the summer – Apple iPads, loaded with software ranging from Pages to Garage Band. Perhaps the most immediately important software to the teachers will be Keynote – Apple’s equivalent of Powerpoint. Teachers will be able to convert their existing Powerpoint lesson plans to the new platform and project them directly from their iPads via Apple TV, which will be installed in every classroom.
    “It’s going to be great,” said MCA social studies teacher Jay Ellerbusch. “We won’t be tethered to our classroom computer anymore when doing presentations. We’ll be able to walk around the classroom as we teach. It will make for a more interactive learning environment.”
    A total of 78 new iMacs will be deployed in the school, including five with 27-inch monitors in the offices of WMCA, the school’s state-of-the-art, in-house TV station.
    They will be supplemented by 200 iPads on seven mobile carts that can be signed out by teachers for classroom use.
     English teacher Gilly Jaunet is excited about the educational possibilities of the carts.
    “There are so many ways to incorporate the iPads into lessons,” she said. “Let’s say there’s a writer I’d like students to sample, but who is not formally in the curriculum. If the copyright on that author’s work has expired, as it has for folks from Shakespeare to Mark Twain, then I can access a particularly great passage from their work via Apple’s Free Books software and incorporate that passage into a lesson.”
    “Maybe, just maybe,” Jaunet continued, “one or two students will be so intrigued by that lesson that they will explore more of that author’s work on their own.”
    The arrival of the Apples does not mean the end of PCs running on Microsoft operating software. “We’re looking for a healthy mix of the two,” explained school technology coordinator Trina Joseph. “We’ve seen a lot of schools go all in one way or another. It’s becoming increasingly clear to us that our students, at least for the foreseeable future, will need to be technically proficient on both platforms. It’s our job to give them the tools to do so.”
    Students will still have access to three PC labs in the fall. MCA’s teachers, meanwhile, will still utilize their school-issued laptops to supplement their iPads. And they will have the option of using one of six mobile PC carts in the classroom.
    Jay Combe is a teacher at Mount Carmel Academy in New Orleans.