Students create electronic study guide

Students at Faust Junior High School and Chambersburg Area Senior High School developed a study guide for the Kindle. Among the students were, from left, Brice Williams, Jackie Rosenburger, Caleb Strite and Rebekah Byers examine the study guide on the Kindle.

Forget the mess of jumbled papers and hand-written notes that many students use to prepare for tests.

A paperless study tool is now an option at two Chambersburg schools — on a Kindle.

Students from three classes at Faust Junior High School and Chambersburg Area Senior High School took advantage of the technology of their generation when they produced a study guide for the Kindle, Amazon's ebook reader.

Lisa Shaw's agbioscience class at Faust and Deb Lehman's child development class at Chambersburg High both worked to create the content for the book. The two teachers decided it would be titled "Flashcards for Genetic Studies for the Keystone Exam."

Erin Barket's graphic design class at Faust helped format the typed information for use on a Kindle.

The project began before the second half of the school year when students began working on the book to help them study for the Keystone Exam, a state test.

"We started working towards this probably in January," Shaw said.

The three teachers collaborated on the project and obtained a Chambersburg Chamber Grant to purchase Kindles for students' use, Shaw said.

The plan started when the teachers were bouncing ideas off of each other, Barket said.

And the students responded well to their team project.

"I think it was nice to see it all put together at the end," said Elisabeth Forsythe, 15, a student in Shaw's class.

The students in the science classes compiled questions and answers about cellular processes and genetics to include in the book. They used the material they learned in class and information they read in separate articles to write questions and answers for the study guide.

Students created multiple-choice, true-and-false and short-answer questions for their book.

"We were supposed to write questions from material during the year," Elisabeth said.

The project helped students better understand the topics that they had learned in class during the year.

Brice Williams, 15, one of Shaw's students, explained the project helped particularly with "meiosis and mitosis and the different phases (of cell division)."

Brice said his favorite part was "being able to have it on the Kindles and being able to write out the questions in our own format."

The students enjoyed the experience, and many appreciated seeing their names on the published book.