Poe, Tarkington students present at technology conference

Students from two local elementary schools presented in front of their peers at the recent Students Involved with Technology (SIT) Conference. The conference was held Saturday, Feb. 11, at South Elementary School in Arlington Heights and attracted more than 400 students, parents, teachers, and volunteers.

Five students from Poe Elementary School shared what they have learned about drones, including how to program pre-made drones, as well as how to innovative to build a drone from scratch.

"This dedicated and creative team became engineering designers as they made sense of problems and persevered in solving them," said Jill Ziegler, Information Literacy Coach at Poe. "Building drones has inspired our students to work collaboratively to design, engineer, and problem solve to accomplish a complex task."

Tarkington Elementary School third, fourth, and fifth grade students presented about news literacy and the ability to determine a website's credibility. The students shared strategies with conference attendees, including a flowchart to help determine when information is accurate and reliable.

"News literacy in the digital age is more important than ever," said Laurie Stanley, Information Literacy Coach at Tarkington. "Our students have learned how to navigate the Internet in search of reliable facts and now they are sharing that skill with others. We could not be more proud of these learners."

Five total SIT Conferences ran concurrently across Illinois on Saturday. All SIT Conference presentations are prepared and presented by 3rd through 12th grade students.