Thornton Academy Postscripts Alumni Magazine Summer 2007 | Page 9

www.thorntonacademy.org

Seventh-Grade Students Bring Colonial
Times to Life through TAOnline
Technology, the arts
bring history alive at
Middle School

The central goal for Bartlett
was helping the students envision the geography, the home
life and the people of this era.
“This was literally putting a face
Kids in the seventh grade at
on what the people of the time
Thornton Academy are talking
looked like,” she said.
about the O.C.—and it has noth Students were able to learn
ing to do with a certain televimore about the colonists during
sion show.
a trip to the Strawberry Banke
It’s all about Thornton’s onmuseum in Portsmouth, N.H., in
line community, TAOnline. The
March.
system provides information
Now complete, the interacabout everything from athletic
tive online museum features
events and field trips to staff
more than 25 “exhibits” on a
meetings and bell schedules.
wide variety of topics relevant
And to a growing number of
to colonial life, and all include
students, the O.C. also serves as
visuals that help the user idena place of learning.
tify with people of the time.
In January, social studies
The project allowed students to
teacher Heidi Brewer tapped into
learn about the economic state
TAOnline with her students as
of early America, the political
Jamestown—the first permanent
organization of the 13 coloEuropean settlement established
nies, and the social issues of
in North America—celebrated
the time, like religious freedom
its 400th anniversary. Creating
and slavery. The seventh-grade
a virtual Museum of American
students scoured books and
Colonization has allowed her
the Web alike on a variety of
students to get tech-savvy while
research subjects: the dress and
thinking critically about life
diet of early