Students practice professional presentations

Hillsborough High School sophomores participated in Johnson & Johnson’s Technology Awareness Program.

By: Donna Lukiw
   A group of Hillsborough High School sophomores found ways to end misread prescriptions and create worldwide video messaging in a program that combined their creative ideas with real-world expertise from Johnson & Johnson corporate leaders.
   The students presented their ideas in a Dec. 5 PowerPoint presentation to Johnson & Johnson employees, school administrators and their peers in the Hillsborough High School commons.
   The 21 Hillsborough High School students participated in Johnson & Johnson’s Technology Awareness Program (TAP) for the first time this year where they were exposed to information technology careers and challenged to use technology as a tool to solve problems.
   "When I think of the TAP program I think of the experience it gives our students," Superintendent Karen Lake said during the final ceremony. "Students had an opportunity to work with real life business plans and employees."
   The students also built computers and spent the day with a J&J employee, attending meetings and observing what they do day-to-day.
   After completing the semester-long program, the students in groups of three to five, had to find a common problem and then figure out a realistic solution to the problem.
   The first group addressed issues arising over illegible handwriting by doctors — their solution was a universal database where doctors type in prescriptions and medical history.
   The students even addressed security issues if this database were used, and created a smaller version of the database using PDAs.
   Other students figured out solutions to recording and reporting blood pressure accurately and communicating globally through video messages and video e-mails.
   "We learned a lot of presentation skills and I know it’ll help me in the future," sophomore Shannon Palzer said. "It was really interesting. I learned a lot."
   During the program, the students also visited the Johnson & Johnson site three times while the employees made two trips to the high school to speak with the students.
   "I did a lot of interesting things like PC repair and learning ways to network," sophomore Anvi Shah said. "We learned what the work lifestyle is at J&J. It was a good experience."
   The company first piloted the program at Franklin High School in 2004 and is expanding its program to other schools in New Jersey.
   The students who participated in the program were Daniel Bivas, Qiudi Chen, Kaitlin DeLuca, Dharmin Desai, Alison Duch, Christine Gwin, Mona Huang, Janice Jeschke, Danielle Messineo, Ananya Nanduri, Ernest Oporto, Kishan Patel, Rajan Patel, Carol Petrosyan, Tiffany Pierce, John Skeele, Rohith Surampudi, Joshlyn Susanen and Justin Tien.
   Administrators and teachers who were involved in bringing this program to Hillsborough High School were Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum Lisa Antunes, Dr. Lake, Karen Bingert, high school principal; Joel Handler, technology coordinator; Ted Lebo, HHS vice principal; Geraldine Ryan and Michael Simborski.