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Technology Plan 2004-2006 |
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Section 1 - Executive Summary
The mission of Sacred Heart School is to challenge each and every student to seek knowledge in exciting and innovative ways for its own sake and to develop critical-thinking and problem-solving skills. We believe that the tools of technology provide the learner with a unique means of exploring and appreciating the presence of God in his everyday life. As professional Catholic educators, we understand that the effective use of technology can further our mission to stress the discipline of reason, the exhilaration of inquiry, and the art of effective communication. We believe that,"Technology must be at the service of the human person ... in conformity with the plan and the will of God ... [insofar as] ... This is a precious resource when placed at the service of [humankind] and promotes integral development for the benefit of all." (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #2293, #2294) As the roles of classroom teacher and student change in the future, we are poised to investigate and embrace those innovative instructional methodologies that capitalize on the learner's abilities and skills. Rather than accentuating the cultural, socioeconomic, and ethnic differences that distinguishes and often separates us, we assert that the global access made possible through such advances in telecommunications technology as the Internet, can assist us in recognizing and in celebrating that diversity. In such an environment, students can grow to become well-rounded, responsible, and caring individuals with moral standards based on the Word of God and human values of kindness and justice for all. We appreciate that innovative technology-based models of teaching and learning can significantly enhance educational outcomes only as part of a broader framework of on-going systemic reform in curriculum integration, assessment, professional development, administration, resource management, and business-to-school-to-community partnerships. We further acknowledge that without changes in our overall approach to instructional methodologies, evaluation, and school organization, the installation of multimedia-capable Internet-connected computers in every classroom will yield few genuine improvements. Our commitment to judiciously incorporate instructional technology recognizes the pitfalls of over-emphasizing presentation and motivation over that of skill-building and problem-solving. Based upon our vision of technology, we have identified three areas of responsibility requiring our attention and efforts. First, educational technology can serve as a gateway for academic achievement, providing a depth and richness of instructional approaches capable of reaching students of all learning modalities. Students must have the appropriate resources and skills to equitably access information, proficiently manipulate data, critically synthesize concepts, and creatively express their ideas as responsible architects of knowledge. Second, the effective use of technologies can not only assist school administrative personnel in management and assessment, but can also support teachers in efficiently tracking performance-based student progress. Third, an integrated system of telecommunications technology can provide a direct immediate connection between school, parents, and the communities-at-large as part of a global social network of learners. Our vision calls for the appropriate cost-effective use of technologies that encourage a collaborative constructivist curriculum where the classroom environment actively engages the young learner. We agree that for technology to satisfy the student's natural God-given curiosity while stimulating his/her search for knowledge, the hardware and software must be such an inseparable component of the learning process that the person's productivity will decline without the continual and disciplined use of technological tools. We understand that only through on-going professional development, incentives, and appraisal can teachers become aware of and comfortable with technologies they are expecting their students to use on a daily basis. Moreover, we appreciate that technology is necessary for streamlining many of the time-intensive administrative tasks of managing a local school as part of a diocesan-wide system. Finally, we hope that as technology advances, learning on all levels will be achieved within a Christian framework. The equitable access to technology demands that every individual be provided with adequate training, opportunities for the practical application of acquired knowledge and skills, and substantive critical feedback. For these advancements to be considered as an integral component of the total learning experience, students, parents, teachers, administrators, and the community-at-large must have a vested interest in maintaining the availability of these emerging technologies. Within the context of our mission and vision statements, the school will:
§ Section 2 - Technology Inventory The Sacred Heart School facilities include a sixty-year-old three-story brick main building housing grades first through eight in addition to the administrative offices, the nursing suite, and the office of the Director of Religious Education. Immediately adjacent are separate buildings for the media/technology center and for the PreK/Kindergarten located below ground level to the community Church. In accordance with the adopted definition of the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Rural Health Policy (ORHP/HHS) as originally developed by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and as utilized by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and its Universal Service requirement (Section 254), Sacred Heart School in Mount Holly is designated as located in an urban county, excluding the Goldsmith modifications. An upgrade was performed in October 2000 to the dedicated electrical circuits installed in 1998 in each classroom of the main school building to accommodate additional computers/peripherals. Plans call for the installation of a separate circuit in the facilities housing the media/technology center by June 2001 plus an additional service to the main school building for air-conditioning. No changes have been made in the coaxial cable television or public address wiring added to the main building with the 1998 electrical upgrade, except for the installation of a video transmitter allowing for school-wide internal broadcasts of videotapes. The Lucent Technologies MLS telephone system installed in 1998 was replaced in 2003 with an NEC digital integrated voice-mail serving the parish and school facilities. A dedicated fax/data line supplements the current five trunks entering the main building. The media center and PreK/K telephones, although part of the parish system, is connected by intercom to the main school building. Individual telephones are located in the administrative offices, library/media center, faculty/staff lounge, nurses' office, Early Childhood facilities, and maintenance room. Independent phones are available in the cafeteria for use by the contracted food service and the after-school program staff. Category-5 cable connects all main building networked computers to a central hub which is linked by an underground multi-mode fiber optic cable to a second hub connected by category-5 wiring to the media/technology center workstations and the Kindergarten computers. This arrangement provides each location with a direct static-IP address connection to the Internet via the Windows 2000 Exchange school RAID-compliant server housed in the principal's office. The school website www.sacred-heart-school.org (207.103.43.130) is maintained on the on-site server with DNS services provided by Voicenet. Internet access is provided via a T1 underground fiber optic line connected directly to a router located in a secure mechanical room at the point of demarcation of the phone system. Sacred Heart School maintains a technology conference room within the main school building equipped with a wireless access point plus seven (7) Pentium-class Compaq multimedia Deskpro personal computers (Windows 98) with 14-inch displays with shared access to an HP laser printer. A Smartboard connected to one workstation with an Epson InFocus projector is available for whole-group instruction. The media center maintains an electronic card catalog system of all resource materials accessible to students and staff via two Pentium-class IBM workstations (Windows XP Professional) in the library as well as through any classroom workstations. Each first through eighth grade classroom is equipped with three (Compaq Deskpro/Presario and/or IBM NetVista) Pentium-class workstations (Windows 98 or XP Professional) with 14 or 17 inch monitors plus one shared HP color inkjet printer. Grade level clusters can print to networked HP laser jet printers located throughout the school buildings. Kindergarten through eighth grade science teachers additionally have an Intel QX3 digital microscope connected via a USB cable to one workstation. Every classroom contains a television monitor with local cable or restricted DirectTV satellite access connected via video converter to one workstation plus a VCR and a DVD player. Fifth through eighth grade classrooms are equipped with wireless access points allowing these students access to the Internet and server resources through any of eleven (11) IBM Thinkpad laptops (Windows XP Professional). Forty (40) AlphaSmarts are additionally available for use by Kindergarten through sixth grade students. The installed base of software includes MS Office 2000 Professional plus grade-specific educational applications targeting each content area. The science laboratory contains two IBM NetVista workstations (Windows XP Professional) one of which is dedicated to the WeatherNet station atop the school building, while the other with a CD-RW drive is reserved for multimedia production along with the Sony digital video camera. A Smartboard connected to the multimedia workstation with an Epson InFocus projector is available for whole-group instruction. The music classroom is equipped with two Pentium-class workstations (Compaq Deskpro/IBM NetVista) with 14-inch monitors plus one HP color inkjet printer and two HP color flatbed scanners. The Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten classrooms contain six (6) and eight (8) Pentium-class Compaq or IBM NetVista workstations (Windows 98) respectively with 14-inch monitors connected to an HP inkjet printer and a local networked HP laser printer. The main administrative office contains two non-filtered Internet-enabled Pentium-based IBM NetVista workstations (Windows XP Professional) with 14 inch displays loaded with MS Office and Parish Data System School management software. One workstation is connected to two (2) switchable dot-matrix printers, while the other is equipped with an HP color inkjet printer. Both workstations can send documents directly to the networked Canon photocopier. The Office of the Principal is equipped with a Pentium-class non-filtered IBM NetVista (Windows XP Professional) with dedicated HP monochrome and color laser printers. The faculty/staff lounge contains two non-filtered IBM NetVista workstations (Windows XP professional) with 14-inch displays connected to a dedicated HP laser printer. Each unit is covered by the standard warranty maintenance agreement. Filtered Internet access on all workstations is provided through the IBM NetVista school server by Voicenet via a T1 line with an internal firewall. All classroom workstations are secured by separate power-on and/or network logon passwords. Calculators are available to all first through eighth grade students as an instructional tool in mathematics and science. Middle school students are provided with scientific graphing calculators. § Section 3 - Three-Year Goals & Objectives Engaged learning demands that the student attend, process, and transform information into stable and dynamic knowledge structures. Consequently, the impact of technology upon the design and implementation of curriculum, instructional strategies, and assessment methods rests upon two essential assumptions. First, that a skilled learner is one who consistently strives to understand the meaning of relevant tasks, while controlling his/her own cognitive processes. Second, that a proficient learner establishes his/her own unique context-specific goals, which motivates him/her and focus his/her attention to the task. Technology can serve as a tool for effectively activating appropriate prior knowledge by providing information in a clear, organized, and meaningful manner. Students who have acquired the skills to use context-specific knowledge are able to recognize patterns and arrange or chunk unfamiliar information in order to generate connections to similar problems or situations. Most effective learners are those who have the flexibility to develop and to spontaneously access a range of learning strategies. Categorizing and summarizing, critical to the organization of schema, can be internalized by the learner, if an assortment of opportunities to practice and to apply these skills to varied contexts is provided along with appropriate corrective feedback. Within the context of our mission and vision statements, technological resources can best be utilized by our students in accomplishing the following goals:
§ Section 4 - Three-Year Implementation Strategies/Activities (June 2004-June 2007) In keeping with our ongoing efforts to integrate technology throughout the classroom curricula, the Sacred Heart School faculty will focus its attention upon the use of technology as an instructional tool in a specific content area. During the next three years, the students and teachers will continue to collaborate on an ongoing project to develop lessons in specific content areas using technology as a means of information gathering and dissemination of content. PreKindergarten students will use grade-specific language arts and social studies software to support the learning of letter/vowel sounds and the world as community as part of thematic units. Using traditional nursery rhymes, stories, chants, poems and songs, supplemented by instructional resources available on the Internet and available classroom software, Kindergarten students will use installed software and teacher-selected websites to identify rhyming words in literature and compose simple rhymes as well as to appreciate United States and world history through a study of national and foreign holidays. First through third grade students will use content area specific software plus the Amazing Writing Machine, and MS Office to reinforce listening and speaking vocabularies, left-right progression, letter-sound correspondence, letter formation, punctuation rules, and the parts of speech. Students will compose and publish their own stories, create spelling dictionaries, and prepare slide shows. Students will use internet resources to complete word searches and other assignments concerning native American and colonial lifestyles, levels of government, multiculturalism and individual family trees, and world geography. The study of the structure of living things will be enhanced through the use of the Intel QX3 digital microscope. Fourth through sixth grade students will use installed applications to reinforce vocabulary and phonics, silent and oral reading comprehension, plus critical-thinking verbal and written skills. Research on various literary genre will be conducted using the internet to prepare critiques, book reports, term papers, and multimedia presentations using MS Office. Students will exploit on-line resources and software to investigate the history, government, and topology of the state of New Jersey along with various regions of the United States. The culture, religion, history, geography, and economic systems of Canada, Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean will be studied using available technology. Students will use MS Excel to analyze/graph data presented as part of the mathematics curriculum. Middle school students will use MS Word and the internet to complete various research assignments focusing upon the five-step peer-review writing process. Graphing calculators will be employed as an instructional tool in the teaching of pre-algebra and algebra. Students will use MS Excel to analyze/graph data gathered through hands-on scientific experiments. Oral presentations in language arts and social studies will be enhanced through the use of student-created MS Powerpoint presentations. The faculty will continue to develop various assessment measures and tools to evaluate the student's knowledge of the content area as well as the integrated use of technology. Our teachers will continue the practice of recording individual student use of technology through classroom logs in all subject areas referenced in their lesson plans which cite specific diocesan and/or New Jersey Core Content Curriculum Standards. As part of their professional improvement plans, the faculty will document their review of current research on technology education through written summaries of journal articles. § Section 5 - Funding Plan (June 2004-June 2007) Based upon the objectives and goals outlined by the Administration, the following three-year plan has been proposed for consideration and implementation. Estimated budgets include expenditures for connectivity. Year 2004-2005 Estimated Budget $20,000
Year 2005-2006 Estimated Budget $32,000
Year 2006-2007 Estimated Budget $35,000
The proposed three-year plan depends upon the commitment of budgeted annual funding, grants, and federal/state entitlements for equipment procurement and maintenance as well as professional development. § Section 6 - Staff Development The majority of educational experts find that the current state of technology training is for the most part ineffective insofar as these programs primarily consist of one-size-fits-all basic introductory lessons with few opportunities for hands-on experiences, immediate feedback or follow-up presentations. Such large groups instructional sessions fail to address the concerns of classroom teachers who themselves possess various levels of computer knowledge and skills. According to the Education Department, although schools foremost tend to provide adequate training in low-end computer mechanics, teachers express increasing frustration over the lack of direction in the application and integration of technology into the classroom curriculum. At the behest of the Administration, the Sacred Heart School faculty and staff continue to attend on an annual basis a wide range of workshops/courses funded either through budgeted monies for professional development or federal entitlements. Beginning in 1997, training opportunities have been made available to all staff members via Burlington County College adult non-credit courses, diocesan professional development technology workshops, and programs sponsored by the Education Technology Training Center of the Burlington County Institute of Technology. Teachers are required to attend at least one technology workshop per school year as part of their professional improvement and to implement computer-based instruction in all content areas whenever practical and appropriate in the classroom. In this regard, all instructional staff members possess a moderate to advanced level of proficiency in the use of technology. The role of the teacher is to structure learning tasks that address each student's individual level of intellectual development and personal interests. Instructors can enhance the learning process by placing higher-order cognitive demands upon the learner and by involving the student in activities which elicit reflective responses and focus upon comparing, interpreting, observing, summarizing, and classifying available information. Within the context of our mission and vision statements, technological resources can best be utilized by our instructional staff to:
§ Section 7 - Evaluation Plan The Principal will be responsible for performing an annual evaluation of the technology goals and objectives discussed herein as well as for disseminating the results and conclusions of this assessment to appropriate parties. Curriculum Through direct observation, review of teacher lesson plans; analysis of student grade reports; surveys of parents, staff, and other publics; and interpretation of appropriate student assessments, the Principal will determine the extent to which students have utilized available age-appropriate technologies to:
Staff Development Through peer-to-peer training, discussions during faculty in-services, and reviews of teacher workshop reports, the Principal will determine the level to which teacher have used technology to:
Funding Through annual reports and meetings with the technology coordinator, staff, the pastor, and the Principal will determine the extent to which specific groups and individuals have:
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