Thornton Academy Postscripts Alumni Magazine Summer 2012 | Page 6

In T h e C lassr o o m

If It Looks Like a Pen,
Writes Like a Pen…

How Pencasting Encourages Critical Thinking

Matthew Amoroso knows a thing
or two about innovative teaching,
but that doesn’t mean he’s resting
on his laurels or letting his students
off easily either. A Summa Cum
Laude graduate of the University
of Southern Maine and one of eight
nominees for the 2013 Maine State
Teacher of the Year, Matt stepped
away from his rigorous teaching and
club-advising schedule to describe
his first year of introducing “pencasting” technology in TA’s classrooms.
If you’re familiar with how a cell
phone’s functions compare to those
of computers, then you might not
be surprised to learn that a pen
can record and transmit interactive
audiovisual files. Far from the stuff
of 007 movies, this technology is
tweaking the way students learn
and how faculty assess their work.

Matt explained, “I assign problems
to groups of students. Each student
is required to explain how they’re
solving the problem as they write
down the solution. The pen records
both their voice and a movie file of
their writing.”
Jason Kyriazi ‘12, one of Amoroso’s
students, favors the experiment, “I
liked how the problems went online
and you could hear and see every-

“I’m trying to get them to
say what they’re thinking
while they’re solving
the problem”

In this 12th year of its operation, TATV station’s faculty station
manager and team of student leaders shifted the station from airing on
cable-only to global streaming on the world wide web. TATV is one of the
few high school student-run TV stations in the country.
Staff from the New England School of Communications of Bangor visited
the Thornton Academy Television studio in May and workshopped lighting
and sound techniques with students in the TV Production Class.
To watch TATV programming or learn about our TV studio and editing lab,
go to www.thorntonacademy.org/tatv.

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“Rising above just plugging into a
formula is crucial. Physics used to
be taught with a clear, step-by-step
method for solving problems, but
kids had no sense of physics itself.
I’m trying to get them to say what
they’re thinking while they’re solving
the problem,” says Amoroso.
- Patricia Erikson

thing people were doing. Sometimes they had a better way of doing
things.”

Thornton Academy Television Goes Global

Postscripts

Matt showed me how he plugged
the pen into a USB port of his
computer and then watched and
listened to a student solving a
problem. “One of the best things is
that the teacher can fast forward to
the one challenging portion of the
problem by simply clicking on a
particular line of the solution.”

To watch how pencasting works,
see www.livescribe.com