Whiz Kids

By SUSAN WHEELDON, CJ Staff Writer
Commonwealth Journal

May 10, 2008 07:47 pm

— Pulaski Elementary is now home to a state championship team.
Students from the school brought home a titleholder’s trophy from the Student Technology Leadership Program (STLP) state competition, held Wednesday at Heritage Hall.
Over 100 elementary schools competed for the title.
“I felt like I was so excited — it didn’t feel real until today (Thursday),” said Sue Stickley, co-leader of the schools STLP program. “It kind of felt like a dream.”
The winning project the STLP students of Pulaski Elementary submitted for consideration included videos called “The Way to Be Series,” designed to teach their fellow classmates how to act in certain situations including on the playground, in the lunch room, and during testing.
The four students who went to state — including Laura Hancock, Lauren Tranthem, Lauren Murphy and Taylor Cooper — will travel to San Antonio to represent Kentucky at the National Education and Computing Conference held June 28 through July 2.
Stickley said the four students who represented the school did so because they “did a lot of the leg work” on the project, staying after school and doing work at home to make sure the project was completed.
“While preparing for the state championship competition, we tried to make our project perfect,” said Hancock. “We spent a lot of time after school and at home working on the various parts of the project.”
The project tried to illustrate in a positive manner the actions students should take to reduce discipline problems in the school, instead of simply telling them what not to do.
While the four students represented Pulaski Elementary, around 30 total students helped with the project throughout the school year, beginning in August.
Tranthem, the primary videographer for the videos, said the four objectives the team wanted to get across were to be responsible, be respectful, be a team player and be ready to learn.
Some of the other projects at the state level included a video on playground safety, a PowerPoint presentation that was made to convince a school’s board of education to put in a crosswalk, a solar car and a recycling project.
“After we won the state championship, a police officer escorted us back to school,” said Murphy. “That was really exciting and people in other cars were pulling off of the road for us because of the officer’s blue lights.”
Murphy added that then when they arrived at school, there were many people waiting to cheer them on, including Superintendent Tim Eaton and others from the board of education.
“Pulaski Elementary's achievement personifies the ideals and goals of both the Student Technology Leadership Program and of Pulaski County Schools." said Teresa Nicholas, district technology coordinator for the district. "We are very proud of our students for the effort they have put into their program."
Now the students can look forward to showing off their project nationally. All four of them are very excited about the chance to do just that.
“I’m excited times ten,” said Cooper.
As well as winning a team championship, Lauren Trantham brought home a state title in digital writing for the school, for her brochure about the videos the STLP team produced. In the brochure, Trantham tells about each of the DVDs, what the STLP students are trying to let others know, and how they can go about buying one or all of the DVDs.
“We’re in the process of copyrighting them and selling them (the videos) to other schools,” said Reynolds.
Over 90 school districts throughout the state of Kentucky were represented at the state STLP competition.
STLP is a project-based learning program that empowers students in all grade levels to use technology to learn and achieve. It was established in 1994 by the STLP State Advisory Council, which is composed of teachers, students and community leaders. The program is open to all students in all grade levels in every school in Kentucky.

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