Crescent students demonstrate tech-support program at Voorhees board meeting

Crescent Elementary School students and staff visited the Sept. 15 Voorhees Township Board of Education meeting to demonstrate a student-run tech team that helps teachers and classmates with classroom technology.

Principal Miss Morris introduced the Crescent tech team and invited technology specialist Miss Gumbto and students to the podium. The fifth-grade team described weekly meetings, classroom visits to assist teachers, work on morning announcement production and a tech tips website intended for student use on classroom iPads.

"Once a week, our team meets in the computer lab during lunch or recess. Miss Gumbto posts an agenda in our Google Classroom that tells us what we'll be doing during the meeting," said Kairina Rudy, a tech team member. "We'll either learn something new or visit other classrooms to help the teachers and students."

Students described a range of activities: helping with morning video announcements, collecting and resetting kindergarten iPads for the new school year, assisting peers with Google Slides, and producing short how-to videos using screen recordings. Team member Grant Heddle said the group used Canva and Google Sites to build a "tech tips for kids" site that appears on student iPads.

Miss Gumbto said the model came from a counterpart at Signal Hill and that Crescent doubled the size of its team each year through January recruiting. Board members and the superintendent praised the student presenters; the students were excused to leave after the presentation.

The board thanked the Crescent students and staff and said the district would make the tech tips available for wider staff access.