Tara McGowan's List: Education

• The Quaker Valley High School
• all but two Allegheny County school districts receiving Classrooms For the Future grants -- Allegheny Valley did not apply and Duquesne was not eligible -- every district is equipped with technological teaching tools.
• Those schools use the power of technology to gather data and collaborate together."
• hrough video conferencing, which allows students to take virtual field trips or converse with students around the district or around the world.
• Jeff Taylor, director of curriculum, assessment and technology for North Hills.
• Teachers monitor the blogs, allowing students to learn how to behave on the Internet in a safe environment, said Chris Stengel, director of technology.
• Grades and homework assignments are now available on district portal Web sites, memos to parents are sent via e-mail or text message, and study guides are part of class Web sites in many districts. Students in the Fox Chapel Area School District start using online supplements designed by their teachers as early as first grade, said Norton Gusky, coordinator of educational technology for the district.
• "Now we have to look at how do we take technology to the next level where we're personalizing it and using it to meet the needs of many students."
• the introduction of iTunes University to local schools this year, students will be able to access original content from their teachers on their iPods, said Kevin Conner, instructional technology specialist for the Allegheny Intermediate Unit.
• "When rock 'n' roll came out, it was like, 'Oh my god, the world is going to fall apart,' " Czegan said. "And it can be the same now. The kids are so into their technology. It's just taking it and showing them how to use it in different lights."

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• Joplin Public Schools will receive $95,305 from the U.S. Department of Education to equip 41 classrooms with SMART Boards connected to LCD projectors and laptop computers.

• Scholastica in Dhaka has used this approach to allow the school to keep in touch with parents at all times. They have started an SMS service that keeps parents informed about important school announcements and provides other emergency notifications. They also maintain a database of email addresses of parents and use it to get in touch with them, even if they are not in the country. Parents can also communicate with the school through email with their individual queries, complaints or suggestions. This way, parents can remain updated with their child's progress no matter where they are.
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  Unfortunately, due to the high cost, very few educational or training institutions in Bangladesh have been found to use SMART Boards. However, if the cost is weighed against the teaching benefits, SMART Boards may prove to be quite worth it, especially in boosting the institution's reputation.
• Sadly, although private schools have started taking the initiative, the public schools of Bangladesh give little importance to technology or the use of computers. The whole world is making a transition into the age of information and if Bangladesh and its citizens do not want to be left behind, every effort should be made to inculcate computer skills among students in the public schools as well.

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• "All my friends have one," he says, admitting that homework would be a lower priority than video games.
• s? Now that the cellphone is ubiquitous and kids have TVs in their bedrooms, the laptop, it seems, is the universal - and in this store, international - must-have.

• "What disturbs me is we're not educating kids in a critical way about content," she says. "There is an unbelievable amount of potential for the computer. But kids need to learn what the limits are."

   

  That would rule out "hours and hours" of computer games and pornography, which might be replaced by social-networking education and safety, or could include discussions about the accuracy of sources such as Wikipedia.
• The skill of reading a complex text and analyzing it has become extinct, he says. "They're very good at information retrieval, pretty poor on analysis and reflection."
• "The computer is an empowerment tool," says Dr. Bauerlein, who is also a professor of English at Atlanta's Emory University. "It's very quickly responsive to users, which means it is pushing the activity of the kids beyond the control of the teachers." One teacher he spoke to says he's turned from being a teacher into a learning monitor, on the lookout for porn and MySpace pages.

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• With the advent of new technology, educators in Pamlico County are taking some new approaches—and they’re using $971,000 in Impact grant money to get it done.
• And when they came to school they were bored because there wasn’t anything to keep their attention. And now we have document cameras, we have Promethean Boards, we have Wiis—which will all help to increase student achievement.”
• “The students that we’re dealing with today are digital natives,” said Jenita Shepard, the technology director for the school system. “They know how to use the technology. This is the way they learn. They don’t learn with textbooks like they did in the past.”

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• As the high school's biology, physical science, chemistry, physics, industrial arts, Web design, robotics and engineering teacher, Alan Cunningham is the one-man science and technology department at Arlington High School.
• he TechStart foundation will award Cunningham with the 2008 Technology Educator of the Year award.
• The touchstone of his program is the HonkerTech program - a combination of science, technology, engineering, and math, also known as STEM. The HonkerTech title relates to Arlington High's mascot, the Canadian goose, or honker.
• Since 1995, HonkerVision and HonkerNet have earned more than $100,000, which helped support technology programs at the school.
• "He tries to be on the cutting edge in terms of technology, and incorporate that into the classroom," Smith said.
  
  "He's very high-energy," Smith added. "He always has a joke, and he's always smiling. He's very positive with the kids, so they are excited to be in his class. And he holds them to a high standard."

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• t faculty members at Sir G. E. Cartier Elementary School in London, Ontario, went through last spring seems beyond the call of duty: a few of them agreed to be duct-taped to a gym wall while students hit them in the face with pies. Why on earth would they do that? To raise $3,000—enough cash for an interactive whiteboard, the most coveted piece of educational technology on the market right now
• In the U.K.—where 70 percent of all primary and secondary classrooms have interactive whiteboards, compared with just 16 percent in the United States—students in those classrooms made the equivalent of five months' additional progress in math.
• studies suggest that the devices boost attendance rates and classroom participation.
• Many older educators are "petrified" of the boards, says Peter Kornicker, a media specialist at P.S. 161 in Harlem, where despite a student poverty rate of 98 percent, all 35 classrooms are equipped with touchscreens

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• As teachers find more effective ways to incorporate the Internet, clickers and smart boards into their lesson plans — technology that has been around for several years — they look to the future for innovative teaching tools, including digital libraries, career labs and interactive whiteboards.
• In the next few years, the Snowline Joint Unified School District will build three new schools, and the district hopes to equip the schools with interactive whiteboards, LCD projectors and other new digital tools, according to Director of Technology Hamilton McDermott.
• “It really increases the interactivity, and every subject can use the technology,” said McDermott, who has been working with Victor Elementary and Hesperia Unified school districts to design the digital classrooms. He estimated a low-end digital classroom may cost $15,000 to $20,000 to complete.
• Such labs would be used for a course that teaches career planning through interactive software in specific fields, from robotics to forensics to music composition.
• “At first I dug my heels, and I didn’t even want to go anywhere near computers. I was very intimidated at the beginning and had to learn a lot, but as soon as you get on board with the technology and work out some of the bumps, you just can’t imagine teaching without it.”
  Sixth Street Prep School fifth-grade teacher Mariett Craig.
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• “We really want to take technology to the next step and have students use it every part of their day.”
  Helendale School District Superintendent Brian Dietz.

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• education technology experts are encouraging teachers to play simulation-themed games in the classroom to help students think more critically. By building cities, empires, cultures—or even zoos—students enter virtual worlds where they must rely on creative problem-solving and analytical skills.
• David McDivitt, who teaches world history and sociology at Oak Hill High School in Converse, Indiana, says games teach his students important lessons about cause and effect
• I've had kids tell me they don’t think the war would have lasted as long if countries had been more aggressive with Hitler earlier on,” he says. “They can read that in a textbook, but they’re much more likely to remember it after seeing it played out.”
• A pioneer of educational video games is Civilization, says Bill MacKenty, head of instructional design at Hunter College High School in New York City and a former Massachusetts elementary school teacher.
• We often think of gaming as a diversion from reality, says David Williamson Shaffer, an education science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of How Video Games Help Children Learn , but they’re actually more real than some of the experiences kids have in school.
• He now works in a research group that field tests games that “help students learn to think like engineers, urban planners, journalists, lawyers, and other innovative professionals, giving them the tools they need to survive in a changing world,” according to the group’s Web site, Epistemic Games.
• Brock Dubbels, who teaches language arts and literature at Richard Green Central School in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He says that after playing a few different titles, you’ll see how they can apply to your teaching goals.
• “It’s an outstanding workout, and it’s a lot more fun than jumping rope or sit-ups,” says Madison Elementary School gym teacher Mike Matejcik. “It’s also fun for kids who don’t feel confident about their athletic abilities. Everyone loves to dance!”
• ubbels uses the literary elements of games—such as genre, tone, plot, setting, and characters—to increase student comprehension and critical evaluation skills. “All games have a story,” he says. “They’re built on traditional narrative elements and film theory, but have interactivity that students find engaging.”
• Bill MacKenty agrees that goal-setting is key. “You have to have a conversation before and after the game; you have to ask questions and get students writing about what they’ve experienced, or that critical thinking isn’t crystallized,” he says. “If you stick a kid in front of the computer and expect something magical to happen, you’re going to be disappointed. You need to ask, ‘what are my objectives?’ You need planning and assessment. It’s just good teaching.”

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