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Least TernAbout
Least Tern
Why Least Tern | Who Are We? | Fees | Contact Us
The endangered least tern is making a comeback on the protected beaches and dunes of Reid State Park, Georgetown, Maine. A small, independent and restless bird, it coexits with the (also endangered) peaceful and group-oriented piping plover. Public beach access and new beach-front homes nearly spelled the end of the least tern. However, the State of Maine, its residents, and the tern have worked together to reestablish it at the Park. The least tern represents to us the assertion that change need not lead to the disappearance of valuable small things. We know that preservation takes hard work, individual effort, group effort, leadership, and energy.
We believe in the change that computers and other technologies brings to education. We do not believe that this change means the extinction of the educational values that can be called "traditional." Rather, we believe that a traditional education is enriched by technology tools and by the wealth of resources available on the Internet. We do, however, believe that change requires a rebirth of the adventure of learning and an affirmation that learning is a process of guided discovery.
It is our hope that we can help teachers to become energetic, empowered, restless users of classroom laptops and other technologies. We offer our knowledge and help inexpensively and to small groups, focusing upon a core of "learning for teaching" content that can be immediately used in the classroom.
John McIlvain and Elizabeth Sky-McIlvain have spent 25+ years making a home in Georgetown, Maine. While doing this, they often spent the school year teaching in independent schools in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York. They are now settled in Georgetown permanently.
A graduate of Johns Hopkins (BA and MA), John has been a poet, English teacher, filmmaker, publications advisor, and coach for over 30 years. He began to use a computer in 1979 when he was completing the manuscript for his published novel, Worth Avenue, and he continues to write novels and poetry on his laptop. He is retired from his position as English Department Head and Humanities Laptop Coordinator for Portledge School in Locust Valley, NY, where he developed both curriculum and digital texts for grade 6-12 laptop courses, digitized the Portledge Press, coached 6 championship girls' tennis teams, and represented the faculty on every major school committee. He is now on the Portledge School Board. John has completed a collection of "imitations" of Horace and is seeking to publish this and other poetry.
A graduate of Middlebury College and Rutgers University, Elizabeth has been a teacher and school librarian for over 30 years. She began to use computers in 1971, programming bibliographic search strategies for the Rutgers School of Library Service. Her first personal computer was an Apple IIGS, which she used to develop a ground-breaking digital grade report form and contest-winning HyperStudio multimedia classroom projects for Portledge School. She has been a classroom teacher of Literacy, English, History, Health and Human Sexuality, a coach, a coordinator of PC and Mac labs and a Technology Department Head at Portledge School and Chapin School, where she coordinated k-12 technology curriculum and curriculum mapping, developed content for the web, taught computer skills and multimedia software tools to grades 4-12, team-taught and coordinated robotics, guided and trained faculty in the personal and classroom use of iBooks and iMacs, and advised in the Middle School. She is currently teaching full time at Freeport (ME) Middle School, where her focus is 21st Century Literacy in grade 8. Hers may be the only core middle school Literacy course in the country. She has been awarded the Innovations Grant for instruction by the Freeport School District and an Aspirations Grant for the development of The Wabanaki Technologies Project. She has recently run Literacy and Tech Integration workshops for MAMLE and LD291: Best Practices.
As a member of the Maine Native Studies Committee, Elizabeth has been instrumental in the development of middle and high school level curriculum to support the implementation of LD291. Her Wabanaki Studies site has been developed to support the teaching of Wabanaki history and culture, as required by LD 291, Maine State law. Elizabeth blogs about Wabanaki Studies at U&D.
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Least Tern
Box 248
Georgetown ME 04548
207-371-2767
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This page is licensed under a Creative Commons License.E.Sky-McIlvain 5/11/08
