Technology is a passion of hers and she incorporates it into her students' daily routine as much as possible. Last year she also applied to, and was accepted, to the Space Camp program in Alabama and loved the experience she had there. She has already used some of the skills she picked up there and is always looking to add more to her repertoire. She is currently working on an application to return for year two of the program.
She worked with one of the IDE consultants assigned to her school last year to learn how to create Web sites, use Inspiration software and other packages, and now has a class Web site that posts quarterly assessments and links that relate to the assignments currently being worked on. She is a 21st century teacher who seizes every opportunity to use available technologies and is always looking for the "next thing."
What advantages do you see to incorporating technology into your lessons?
I feel it gives the students a better opportunity to learn. It motivates them and makes the work more engaging. Science can be particularly challenging and technology helps to keep the students on task. It also allows me to work with those students who are especially challenged while others students work more independently. I also find that some students can show me a thing or two when it comes to technology and I am not in the least bit intimidated by that. They're digital
natives you know, citing the Marc Prensky article, we digital immigrants should be afraid of that.
What type of learner does it suit best?
I find it helps with many different learning styles— kinesthetic, visual and auditory in particular—because it allows the student to learn in ways other than just reading a text. The computers can supplement the text by taking the student to far reaches of the globe.
What effects of technology infusion do you see in your students?
The students take more responsibility for their learning as they must research on their own and apply concepts covered in benchmark lessons to the task at hand in the problem-based learning 
task. I see them "thinking outside of the box" a lot more since we started using the laptop cart.
I also find that technology makes resources available to my students that my school cannot provide. We can visit anywhere in the world, explore the universe, without leaving our classroom in Jersey City.
What was your students’ favorite assignment thus far? What assignments are coming up for your students?
They loved doing the periodic table of elements task using the laptops to research their chosen element and creating a presentation on it. I will be using the task I created with my PLC on the plant cell and its parts. It should be a lot of fun for all of us!
Melanie DeFilippis has been teaching for 9 years, 6 of them as a 6th grade science teacher in Jersey City. This is her second year on the Middle School Science Curriculum Task Force, where she, along with her Professional Learning Community, has created Problem-Based Learning tasks leading up to the marking period unit culminating activity in the Jersey City Science Curriculum.