North Cook News

They might not be constituents yet, but a couple of middle-school students had their say with Rep. Tom Morrison (R-Palatine) when they stopped into the capital recently.

Morrison met with two eighth graders from Walter R. Sundling Junior High School in Palatine, who were visiting for Tech Day 2017. The students told Morrison how the school and the wider Community Consolidated School District 15 are working to incorporate technology into everyday learning and across multiple subjects using the ‘Four Cs’: collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity.  

For example, each morning the school’s announcement team makes use of several iPads, with one serving as the announcer's script and another used to create a video, sometimes including stop-motion animation. Students also have undertaken "Genius Hour" projects, inspired by a Google measure in which employees are encouraged to spend 20 percent of their time on a passion project. 

Sundling’s students have developed problem-based learning projects, seeking to address problems in their communities by incorporating technologies like Google Slides and Google Sites to share information.

The students also showed Morrison a robotic car they had brought to Springfield, which they created in the automation robotics class. Groups of students received different robotics parts and created cars that could be programmed to follow a route, with each group trying to create the fastest car.