Tech-Savvy Students Impress Crowd in Sartell

SARTELL -- The third annual Education Done Differently event was held tonight (Thursday) at Sartell Middle School, giving the public a chance to see how technology is helping students in the classroom.

Students from kindergarten through showcased how various technological devices have made learning come alive throughout the school district.

"We've got everything from our elementary kids talking about shared documents to our middle school kids with robotics and 3D printing," says Joe Schulte, a Technology Integrationist for Sartell High School.

The event featured students demonstrating stop motion animation, 3D printing, screencasting, and robotics.

"The people that come to this event are amazed by it," Schulte says. "The people we get here are so impressed with what the students are doing, we just need to continue to work on getting the word out."

"[Since] we've been doing this, it's amazing how far we've come, we continue to evolve it, and make huge leaps and bounds."

Some of the biggest crowds grew around the state tournament-qualifying VEX robots built by 7th graders Jonathan Rivard and Nathaniel Fimrite.

"Mostly everyone here has the same thing in common -- we all love being hands-on," Rivard says. "It's a great learning experience for being hands-on and building the robots."

"It seems everyone is gravitating around the robots and not some of the tables -- but robots are cool, so that's the reaction we were hoping for."