A+Bit+About+Margaret+Manuzzi

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After graduating from Butler University (Indianapolis, IN) in 1992, I began my teaching career with Indianapolis Public Schools. During my nine years with IPS I had a variety of teaching assignments from a multi-age primary class with full inclusion to third and fourth grade classes. I soon realized that making learning real and relevant to my students was a must. Many of the urban students that entered my classroom had limited experiences with the content that I was instructing. How could my fourth graders possibly understand about the Amish and their influences on the state when most of them had never even seen a garden, yet alone a farm? How could my second graders understand their community when most had only seen a limited range of their community (school, home, church)? Making learning a part of their life became my priority. I began changing my teaching method to match the needs of my students. Soon lessons included real-life applications such as writing letters to real people, planning real events, doing scientific experiments to find out the "whys", interviewing people to discover information first-hand and from a variety of sources, and finding out about wildlife in the area and seeing their habitats in person and not on a textbook page. Questions students asked grew into projects to find the answers and present the to the class or an even larger audience. Utilizing technology also became a goal. Students learned how to fine-tune a search to find the information they really needed, to assess an article by looking at the source and possible bias, to present information in a variety of ways to engage their audience.=====

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We were fortunate to be a part of the Buddy Project, which at the time sent home computers with our 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students to encourage home-school connections. This project placed computers in the hands of students and families who otherwise would never have been able to affoard them. Students learned along with their parents about technology and applications.=====

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In 2001 I accepted a postion with the Buddy Project as the coordinator of its learning center (Buddy Teaching & Learning Center) and a professional development facilitator. My areas of training include Moodle (an online course management tool), Project Based Learning, Web 2.0 tools, technology tools and gadgets, and Nintendo Wii integration.=====