Archive for Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Local schools go high-tech with 21st century learning
November 5, 2008
The Bonner Springs-Edwardsville School Board of Education got a taste of high-tech at its Monday meeting.
One of the first items of the new business agenda was a 21st Century Learning presentation by two elementary school teachers and the director of the district’s technology department.
Third-grade teacher Natalie Ball and kindergarten teacher Joy Martz, both Delaware Ridge Elementary instructors, showed the board the collaborative, interactive Web sites they’ve been using to showcase and add to their classes’ lessons.
The Web sites are only accessible by invitation and with a password, and accommodate video and learning games for students to play. Three other teachers at Delaware Ridge are using the wikis, Ball said.
The rest of the presentation on 21st Century Learning was given by Ken Clark, director of the district’s technology department, who demonstrated to the board a few of the gee-whiz tools district teachers have begun to implement in their daily lessons.
Each classroom in the district now has a large overhead plasma or LCD screen, which can be connected to a computer or other media. The screens allow teachers to use different tools that the district has purchased including “clickers,” which look like remote-control consoles and can be used for classroom games, attendance recording or lessons.
Clark showed the board members an example of a $374 mini-laptop, of which the district will soon be ordering 100 for Bonner Springs Elementary and Edwardsville Elementary.
He also clicked through the new Web sites of the district and its schools. The Web address for the district has been simplified to www.usd204.net, an improvement over the clunky www.usd204.k12.ks.us. Also, the school and department directory pages now feature click-to-send-e-mail links instead of displaying the actual e-mail addresses of staff, which allowed Web-crawling programs to collect them for spamming, Clark said.
“I can’t say how fantastic the tech department’s become,” said board member Cliff Brents.
Clark said the district didn’t have a single computer when he first came here as a math teacher 28 years ago.
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Point of View
The postal service is cutting back hours at some rural post offices. How often do you go to the post office?
“For my own personal use, I only go a couple times a year to mail gifts, usually around Christmas and family birthdays. At that time I usually buy a couple books of stamps that last for most of the year! For professional use, I go a couple times a month to check our PO Box.”
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