Lewis and Clark High School Technology Plan

Tech Bond PowerPoint

Vision Statement:

Technology is an important tool in increasing student achievement and preparing students for their future roles in society.

Expanded:

Lewis & Clark recognizes that technology can significantly enhance and support learning for all students.  Technology helps teachers design and implement engaging, imaginative lessons linked to curriculum across subject areas, and makes administration within our school more effective and efficient.  Students who have purposeful access and instruction involving technology are more successful in their diverse post-high school experiences.  The faculty and administration of Lewis & Clark High School are committed to the challenge of giving our students the most rigorous, supportive educational experience we can provide.  We recognize, to meet this challenge, we must embrace the powerful role technology will take in that experience.  

Walking into the building, a visitor would see classroom environments temporarily transformed into computer labs using laptop carts and wireless network hubs/portals.  Teachers and students would present to classes using projectors connected to multimedia stations or laptops, and teachers would have laptops on their desks rather than older, bulkier machines.  Staff members would have the ability to take laptops to meetings, collaborative sessions, and home to be more productive, working smarter rather than harder.  All-school communications would be handled using taped and live video feed sent to all classrooms.  Science classes would have access to computer probes and digital microscopes.  Our building would be equipped with wireless networking and internet “hotspots,” where students and staff would have the ability to connect to the internet and district network resources outside of the classroom.  Using these “hotspots,” students would have the ability to connect to the Internet using their own personal computers and wireless devices.  Students would have increased access to computers to produce quality documents for homework assignments, and to access teachers via academic and personal web pages.  Visitors to our school would not find a single classroom in the building that would not contain at least one current tabletop computer with multimedia capabilities and a mass-storage device (such as a CD or DVD "burner").  These computers would link into existing and/or new televisions and video projectors, and would be equipped with software that allows teachers and students to create and display engaging multimedia presentations.

How Lewis and Clark’s Mission and technology support each other:

The mission of Lewis and Clark High School is to create and maintain a safe and caring environment, which ensures every member reaches a high level of academic achievement that can be verified by objective measures, and which furthers positive intellectual, physical, ethical, and social development.

• All students will achieve at high levels of competency.
• All students will contribute to their community.
• All students will respect diversity.
• All students will feel the school environment is safe and caring.

Goals

• Raise the achievement level of all LC students to meet the standard and eliminate the achievement gap for all students.
  • Essential Questions:

1. What do we want our students to know?
2. How do we know if they learned it?
3. What do we do when they don’t?

Rationale:

• With the Technology Bond, LC will get a considerable sum of money for technology, but the research shows that technology without training has little impact on student learning. The technology purchases must reflect best practices and require a training component for teachers who are recipients.

How will/does technology contribute to LC’s goal for student achievement (what will achievement look like with the technology)?

“Technology helps overcome the two enemies of learning: isolation and abstraction.”

-George Lucas

• Students will have more access to technologies that increase their productivity, and provide them with experience using the same technologies they must be familiar with after high school.

•  Technology (computers in the classroom) helps teachers accommodate different learning styles and helps teachers individualize the learning process.  Visual and kinesthetic learners may find greater benefit in creating a project using multimedia presentation software on a computer with a media projection system.  The bottom line here is that in many cases students become more engaged when they have the opportunity to use technology.

• Computers and media presentation systems offer teachers another option for presenting information, engaging students and offering individualized instruction and learning.

• Classroom teachers can offer more inquiry and project-based learning opportunities when technology is readily available in the classroom.  “Webquests” and related activities offer students the opportunity to examine an event, a set of facts or findings, a historical period or scientific phenomena, from different perspectives.  These activities allow the teacher to tailor projects that offer better quality resources to encourage critical thinking.

• Students in science classes can complete labs with the use of digital microscopes and electronic probes connected to computer stations or wireless laptops.  Their results can be collected, saved, and incorporated into individual or group-generated documents and potentially presented to the entire classroom.  Internet access in the classroom as well would allow those same students to compare their findings with other groups or individuals anywhere in the world.

• Students in math classes can graph difficult equations on wireless handheld devices, send their answers wirelessly to a teacher who can project student work or examples directly from the handheld device to the front of the room.  The math teacher can have students go further with the work, transferring their work to a self-reflection document which illustrates the steps they took to solve the equation and how they think the equation functions, and why they feel their answer is correct.

•  The equipment and software provided to the Business and Marketing Department will allow students to develop the technology skills that are essential in today's society.  These technology skills will not only be used in their other classes at Lewis & Clark, but also at home, at work, and in their future educational programs and careers.

• Students in PE classes would perform a physical activity, and monitor their vital signs with probeware, which could upload results to a wireless tablet pc station in the gymnasium.  They and the teacher can access real-time statistics to see how they compare with students around the district, or around the world online.  Students can upload personal fitness data and incorporate that data into documents and/or presentations that analyze that data and look into the causes of certain physical and vital responses.

In the end, computers and related technologies are tools.  They are tools to help teachers engage students with inquiry-based real-time projects and assessments; they are tools to help students become more productive when producing results for a particular assignment, or gathering research and information; they are tools for teaching and support staff and administration to collect, qualify and interpret data provided by students.  No tool performs a function on its own, and no tool can do the job appropriately and correctly unless the tool’s user knows how to apply the tool to the task at hand.  Staff must be willing to learn how to apply the technology within the classroom, and provide ample opportunity to students to use those tools.

Related Strategy:      

• Teacher Training (District and in-building)
• Web site enhancement for communication
• LC Professional Library
• Network upgrades (wireless)
• Mobile labs (laptops)

Steps:

• Identify teachers who have a desire to integrate technology into the curriculum, and are willing to attend training.
• Increase teacher productivity and flexibility through upgrading and/or replacing existing teacher workstation computers.
• Initiate building-wide upgrades of computers to increase student access to technology.
• Research and purchase new technologies for instructional use; teachers utilizing “demonstration classroom” equipment report back to staff on the value and use of the technologies and assist to train more staff in their use.
• Increase the number of computers available for student use within the building, through the purchase of new workstations and labs, and through the repurposing of existing, upgraded computers.
• Provide regularly scheduled, relevant and engaging training for staff on the appropriate use and application of new and existing building technologies.
• The building Technology Committee continues meeting to collect and interpret data on student achievement as it relates to the use of technology.  The committee will use this information to make adjustments as necessary to the overall Technology Plan.
• Regularly inform staff of any potential changes to the long-term Technology Plan and seek the input of all staff in ongoing decisions.

Estimated expenditures of program:

• $ 611,890 for technology purchases and training.
• Approx. $120,000 from district level for training and technology for selected staff through the “BLT” program.

Stakeholders involved in process:

• Technology Committee
• LC Teachers
• Students
• Administration
• Community

Data to support program:

• Surveys on teacher use
• Research into best practice
• Surveys on student use
• Assessment data: WASL, AP, and other assessment scores
• Culminating projects
• Student portfolios
• Articulation portfolios

Degree of staff awareness of this strategy:

·         High/complete.  Technology Committee members have presented information and the goals of the technology plan to the entire staff at several morning faculty meetings.  In addition, every department at Lewis and Clark is represented on the Technology Committee, and progress reports have been posted and updated on www.lctigers.com.

·         Technology Committee Members and the departments they represent:

Degree of staff who embrace this strategy:

·         High.  Staff members have been and continue to be informed of the committee’s progress, and feedback, opinions and needs have been requested and in many cases received from staff either through emails, conversations with committee members, or presentation to the committee through a department’s committee representative.  The Lewis and Clark staff is aware of the process, the goals of the committee and the vision the technology plan details. 

Technology Plan Overview: Upgrades, Purchases and Training

©2005 Lewis & Clark High School