Good News About Polk County Public Schools

Gause Academy students recently participated in a crash course in building and repairing computers.  Students and staff from Polk State College (PSC) Collegiate High, and students from Traviss Career Center, visited Gause Academy to guide sixth, seventh and eighth grade students through a Computer Exploration Lab.

According to Gause Academy instructor Angela Price, the exercise involved both academic and business/computer classes.

“Gause is becoming a wall-to-wall internet technology academy,” said Price.  “We wanted to provide a hands-on, minds-on activity to help spark students’ interest and know-how with computers.”

While the hands-on lab taught Gause students to identify, remove and replace key components in modern computers, PSC Lakeland Collegiate Program Director Brian Hartpence said the exploration lab was beneficial to his students too.

“The purpose of the activity was to reinforce prior teaching by the faculty of Gause Academy and allow Collegiate students to showcase what they have learned,” said Hartpence.  “The collegiate students that participated in the activity were juniors from the PSC Collegiate High School Technology Program.  All of the students had already earned their CompTIA A+ certification.”

The computer exploration lab was conducted in 45-minute rotations during the morning, and Gause Academy hosted lunch for their guests from Traviss Career Center and Polk State College following the activity.

According to Price, the Gause students were extremely excited about the learning experience.

“They couldn’t stop talking about it and wanted to go back to their classrooms and take computers apart and put them back together,” said Price.  The sixth through eighth grade pre-academy students were engaged, interested and curious added Price, and they intend to continue the pre-academy partnership and hope to expand it.

“Our students in grades nine through 12 were also interested in what our pre-academy experienced,” said Price.  “We would like to repeat this activity with our high school.”

Jennifer Toledo, a Polk State College Collegiate High student, passes a computer power supply to Gause Academy sixth grader Emily Hansen.

Brian Hartpence, a Polk State College Collegiate High Program Director, speaks with Gause Academy students about the inner workings of modern computers.