The technology Mission Statement for District #186 is as follows:
"To provide access to technology for all students, training for all teachers and administrators, and technical support for the instructional program. Technology should be an integral part of the regular instructional process rather than limited to drill and practice."
The overall goal of District #186's five year plan is to increase the amount of technology in the classrooms. The addition of this technology will proceed in a logical sequence and will require training for both teachers and administrators. A staff of teacher trainers is necessary to insure that the new technology is used correctly. According to the plan, one Macintosh computer will be added to each K-4 and high school classroom and two Macintosh computers will be added to 5-8 classrooms per year over the five year period. $10 per student will be spent each year for appropriate software and peripherals. All buildings will be wired for networking, e-mail, Internet and data sharing.
The Springfield School District uses a practice known as the "rule of thirds" for allocating funds to implement its five year technology plan. One-third of the funds available to the district for technology is used for infrastructure, one-third of the monies is used for hardware acquisition and one-third of their funds is used for professional development. Using the funds available in this manner will help the district achieve the goals set forth in their five year technology plan.
Training and inservice opportunities for classroom instructors will be offered in the following areas:
Lincoln School's technology plan is very much in line with that of the district's. We are allowed a technology budget each year and the our technology committee decides how this money is to be spent according to the needs of our students. Our focus is to upgrade the memory in our existing machines, purchase appropriate software and spending the remaining monies on the most advanced Macintosh hardware available. The goal is to put as many computers into each classroom as our budget will allow. Teachers will be trained according to their needs in order to use the new technology to it fullest capacity.
Our plan also calls for training parents to help in classrooms or to help students at home. We would also like to implement a computer check-out system in order to send computers home with students. To that end we have purchased five eMates which we hope to began sending home with students this fall.
I would improve the use of technology in my classroom by using several programs with my students which I have not used to a great extent. I would like to do more e-mail projects, teach my students to do PowerPoint presentations, and have more of my students involved in doing web pages.
Since I have not done many e-mail projects with my students I feel this is one area where I can extent the use of technology. I do have a student mailbox set up and have had students do Pen Pal type activities, however, I would like to involve them in a survey-type or opinion-type project in which they would have to collect data and report it to the project participants in some manner. For example, our district has been discussing whether or not students should wear uniforms to public school. Students could find out how students in other school districts feel about this issue, tabulate the data and post the outcome to the project participants.
I would also like to teach my students how to make PowerPoint presentations. Since students are expected to present culminating projects displaying information they have researched I feel using PowerPoint would be an excellent manner in which to present the information. I would first teach an expert group of students to use the program, then these "experts" could help me teach other students to use it.
Another area of technology I would like to use with more of my students is creating web pages. I have had a group of students make a web site, however, I intend to create one in which all the sixth grade students in our school can make a contribution. I intend to make this web site activity part of my final project for this class, therefore, I know this is one improvement in the use of technology I will be able to accomplish.
In conclusion, in the near future I hope to add an e-mail project, the use of PowerPoint and the creation of a whole grade Internet site to the use of technology in my classroom. Since we use technology extensively to research information, word process documents and to create multi-media presentations in KidPix Slide Shows, Hyper Studio and ClarisWorks Slide Shows, I feel the additions I have outlined above will be beneficial to my students in the area of technology.
My "dream" classroom would look very much like my actual classroom looks now. I would like several additional types of technology and more space, however, the arrangement of my classroom and the method in which I teach would not change.
At present, my students work in teams. The desks in the room are in groups of four so students can work together collaboratively. Students rotate through a variety of research stations which include informational CDs, Internet, laser disks, traditional reference books, filmstrips, videos, and listening centers. Each team moves to a different station each day so that students gather information from many different sources. They are responsible for gathering information on a certain topic and presenting this information in a final project.
The one addition I would make to the physical make-up of my classroom would be more space. When I have thirty students in my classroom, which is most of the time, we are very crowded and can only walk around three sides of the room. I also need more storage space for the software I use, and the books I have acquired for my research stations.
While I already have seven computers in my classroom, I would like to add several Macintosh G3s in order to have enough memory and harddrive space to add graphics and use text in all the documents and multi-media presentations students work on. In additional to the laser printer I have, I would also like to have two ethernet laser printers, one which would be a color laser printer, with an unlimited amount of printer supplies, so students can print their documents with graphics in color or print text documents more quickly. I would also like to have a Sony Mavica Camera which saves 40 pictures on a regular floppy disk. Students would use this camera to take pictures of activities or projects and use these pictures in documents, multi-media presentations, or web pages. Last, I would like to have a new computer projection system which has a high resolution in order for students to see text more clearly. I would use this system to show classes how to use new computer programs, selected Internet sites and to display the students' multi-media projects.
In conclusion, in my "dream" classroom I would like to add several types of technology which I do not have now, add the newest Macintosh computers and more space. I would not change the arrangement of my classroom or the use of technology to do research and to present information.