Students in Mohonasen High School’s Technology Club have been diligently working to make whiteboards for the district’s younger students. So far, the club has made more than 450 boards and has orders for more.
High school math teacher Margaret Kelliher initially came up with the idea to make whiteboards for her math class. She decided to make them herself because she knew the district couldn’t afford them.
I got the idea from the foreign language teachers. I knew the general situation money-wise, so I went to Home Depot and bought 8-foot sheets of whiteboard material and cut them into 1-foot squares, sanded down the edges and there you go, Kelliher said.
The Technology Club, which meets twice a month, was looking to do some community service projects and was hoping to raise a little money to buy materials for future projects. Kelliher went to the club to see if they wanted to start making the boards to sell.
Four students, Mike Zimdars, Joe Majkowski, Matt Lewis and Steve Delmonaco really took to the project and have been making the boards as a team since November.
`They are a really hard-working bunch of kids,` Technology Club advisor George Reluzco said. `This is typical: It’s quarter after three, and I’ll have to kick them out because they’ll keep working and working.`
Teachers said whiteboards are a good tool to have because they allow them to see what each student is doing, making it easier to tell which ones might need a little extra help.
`They are a great tool. I use them in my high school class a fair amount of the time. The students really like to write on the board, but you can’t have 30 students standing at the chalkboard,` Kelliher said. `Also, I can see what they are doing and use them for examples. You can get a fair amount of math in a 12-inch square.`
Bradt Primary School was the club’s first customer. The boards have since become very popular, and the Technology Club has orders from teachers at Pinewood Intermediate School and Draper Middle School.
The club is selling the whiteboards for $1 apiece, and the money they raise is going to go toward materials and potentially a scholarship.
The students have been working as a team to get the job done quickly. Delmonaco, a sophomore, said it’s frustrating when everyone isn’t there to lend a hand.
`It’s been annoying at times when not everyone shows up, but it’s been fun,` he said.
All four of the students want to study some sort of engineering when they graduate so they said working with the tools in the technology department has been exciting for them.
Sophomore Lewis said, `It’s been fun working with the equipment. With blades spinning at umpteen rpms, you have to know what you’re doing.`
The Technology Club members said they got to visit their old classrooms when they dropped off the boards to the younger students, and they watched as the students used them during a math class.
`It makes you feel good to know that you aren’t just making random projects,` Delmonaco said.
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