Thursday, March 1, 2007 Older Editions

The $10,000 questions - Doherty teachers' students win $10K in Apple software they will use on trip

By April Guilmet

When Doherty Middle School teacher John Givens takes his students to Costa Rica next month, keeping those at home posted of their whereabouts will be as simple as clicking a mouse.

Givens and his middle-school students entered and won a geography trivia contest and were awarded $10,000 worth of Apple computers and accessories. The prize enabled Givens to purchase three laptop computers, two of which have movie-making capability, several iPods and a sound dock for the iPods.

"In the past, I've had students make scrapbooks of their travels," Givens said. "But now we can make video scrapbooks of the trip, we can really bring it live."

Givens decided to enter the contest, called the EF Challenge, after receiving a brochure in the mail from EF Educational Tours, a Cambridge-based company enabling students and teachers to travel the globe. Classrooms from all over the country entered the contest, said Sara Buckingham, a representative of EF Educational Tours.

"The students work very hard on finding the answers to the questions," Buckingham said, adding that the questions relate to different cultures around the world. Armed with a list of 10 questions, the English teacher gathered his students together to brainstorm for answers.

Because all of the questions were answered correctly, Givens and his students were entered in a raffle to win $10,000 in Apple technology. The rest, as they say, is history.

"And there's more software coming, still," Givens said. All of it will come in quite handy in the rainforests of Costa Rica, when Givens and his students record live Pod-casts of their experiences.

"You can make recordings and post them right on the Internet," Givens said. "And we'll make movies with our laptops."

Givens, who has taught English at Doherty for 30 years, meets weekly with the seventh- and eighth-graders bound for Costa Rica. Many are already quite Mac-saavy, he said. As for Givens, he said that, fortunately, there are many media experts at Doherty who can teach him about Pod-casting.

"The kids are so up on the iPods. Everyone has one," he said.