Current+Status+of+Education+and+Technology

=Part I: Current Status of Education and Technology=

Technology
The technology and information environment at IST is emerging in a digital age. We are more connected today than ever before in our history. Now people can easily collaborate with peers across the classroom or across the world. Distance does not matter anymore. IST offers staff and students a variety of technology to participate in this digital age. Let us take a look the growing collection of technology at IST.

Connectivity at IST is everywhere. Seventy-seven classrooms can connect to the Internet through a wired connection. All of them can also connect via a wireless connection that covers that entire school campus. The same holds true for the administrative offices. The director, elementary principal, secondary principal, business director, financial manager, and their secretaries all connect to the Internet with both wired and wireless connections. Human resources, publications, purchasing, finances, and maintenance departments connect this way as well. Clearly, connectivity directly influences the productivity and efficiency throughout the school.

Currently, more than three hundred computers support teaching, learning, and administrative computing. Two hundred and twenty-nine Dell desktop computers are distributed throughout the school. Facilities, office staff, finances, and secrataries all together use 33 desktop computers. In the elementary school, nursery and pre-kindergarten share two computers. In grades K-5 each grade level shares 10 computers. (Currrently, kindergarten only has nine computers.) The elementary students also have access to the four computer labs in the school. Labs 1 and 2 each have 23 computers. Labs 3 and 4 each have 15 computers. The library offers another 13 computers for students to use. The elementary students share these labs with secondary students. Unlike the elementary school, in the secondary school there are no shared classrooms with mini labs. Each of the 16 classrooms in the secondary school has just one Dell computer that is connected the digital projector. It is used by students and teachers. The secondary school, however, has exclusive access to a portable computer lab loaded with 15 MacBooks. (Usually 3-5 of these are reserved for replacement computers.) Every teacher and administrator in the school has a MacBook as well. In all, there are 90 MacBooks in the school.

Group viewing devices are found throughout the school. Each of the 12 homerooms in grades K-5 has a digital projector connected to an interactive whiteboard as does the elementary music room. The art and English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms in both the elementary and secondary schools have digital projectors as well. In the secondary school, teachers and students use digital projectors with interactive white boards in three shared classrooms mainly used for science, geography, and mathematics. All of the other classrooms in the secondary school come equipped with a digital projector. Three of the four computer labs and the library have digital projectors as well. You can also find one in the assembly area and the board meeting room. Overall, there are 52 digital projectors and 17 interactive white boards in the school. We also have access to ???? DVD players and ???? analog television sets. One large screen TV in the elementary entrance area displays information to the school community.

Teachers and students have access to digital media tools. There are 21 digital cameras and four camcorders. Twelve of the digital cameras stay with elementary homeroom teachers. The other nine are available for teachers throughout the school to check out. One of the camcorders belongs to grade 5 while the other three remain available for everyone to check out. We have two tripods to use with both the cameras and camcorders. The secondary geography department has three handheld Global Positioning System (GPS) devices. We have two digital voice recorders. One resides in the music department for both elementary and secondary students to record their work. The other one, used primarily to record students’ oral work, resides in the Diploma Program.

A networked printing system compliments a handful of stand-alone printers scattered throughout the school. Nine networked multi-functioned printers are located throughout the school. All staff members and students in grades 3-12 can use these to print, scan, and photocopy documents. Additionally, there are nine stand alone printers in nursery, pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, grade1, and grade 2 classrooms. The PE, world languages, and maintenance departments also use stand-alone printers. Eleven stand-alone scanners sit throughout the school. Apart from three located in administrative offices, the other eight are readily available for staff and students to use.

A standard suite of software exists to support teaching and learning in each school. In the elementary school, students get Kid Pix, Pajama Sam, Freddie Fish, Time Liner, The Graph Club, Kidspiration, Learn About Animals, Learn About Senses, Numbers Undercover, and Mighty Math Number Heroes. The secondary students get Alice, Graphmatica, The Geometer’s Sketchpad, Inspiration, Lego Digital Designer (includes 97 Legomind kits to build robots), Logger Pro, Autograph, and TI Connect. The secondary students also have access to the iLife suite in the MacBooks. Both schools share the following software: Typing Master Pro, Microsoft Office, Adobe CS3, Google Earth, Google Sketchup, Camstudio, and Audacity. Teachers use Web AP software to record attendance and help document student progress.

Teachers and students also have access to a number of online tools they can use to get and share information. The school website (www.istianjin.org) highlights our school, community, programs, and enrollment process. The website’s media gallery hosts the schools videos, photos, and podcasts. The calendar and eNotify features help strengthen school-community relations by providing up-to-date news about current events. We have a few powerful features that are still being explored but not used fully. Teacher sites, for example, provide a convenient way for teachers to keep the entire school community up to date about classroom learning activities. Likewise, the Athletics Manager can showcase the school’s athletic events. And the newly activated Faculty/Staff Portal allows for convenient ways to get needed information and targeted communications in a secure environment. We also share and subscribe to videos on YouTube (www.youtube.com/users/istvideos). Our Facebook group keeps all the current and past IST community members in touch (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6429423703). Used more frequently than all of these, however, is email. Students from grades 3-12, staff, and administration, use Microsoft’s Outlook and Entourage email client to share information efficiently both internally and externally. To organize school events and dates, we also have the Outlook and Entourage Calendar. To take attendance we use the Web-based AP-Web application. This application can also help secondary teachers keep track of students’ academic progress.

Technology Support
//To effectively leverage technology for learning, technical support is essential. This section describes who is supported and in what ways. IST has one Information Technology (IT) teacher in the elementary school. The secondary school has one IT teacher and two Design Technology (DT) teachers. There is one teaching assistant who works with both the elementary and secondary IT teachers. The NPK-12 IT Coordinator is the Elementary IT teacher and PreK-12 IT Coordinator. In a similar role, the IT Manager oversees the implementation, maintenance and support of the technical infrastructure. Four IT Technicians work in this department. They ensure that all technology is working properly for staff and students. Collaborating with all of these groups is the Information Literacy Committee. Formed by teachers and administrators from both schools, this committee works to design and deliver effective educational technology professional development (ETPD) for staff, teachers, and administration. To accomplish this, they focus on two areas: technical support and ongoing professional development. IST also gets support from outside vendors. Key Solutions gives support for computers and network infrastructures. This company works closely with Apple, Inc. whose representatives also meet directly with the technical support groups at IST. iMachines offers both technical support and teacher training for our Promethean Activboards and some of our digital projectors. Lanxum gives technical support for the networked printing system at IST.//

Educational Technology Professional Development
//Educational technology professional development (ETPD) is another essential condition for effectively leveraging technology for learning. What are the ETPD opportunities as IST? Each year, teachers are allotted $1000 to spend on professional development. Most teachers spend this money on conferences and workshops. Some of them are technology-related conferences. Whether or not teachers spend their professional development time and money on such conferences is their choice. However, when school administrators build in professional development days into the school calendar, then attendance is mandatory. This school year, two days were designated for in-house professional development. The secondary teachers dedicated both days to ETPD. The first day focused on using technology to support the teaching and learning, especially regarding the Approaches to Learning (ATL) component of the IB program. The content of the sessions was determined by the secondary principal, Middle Years Program (MYP) coordinator, and the secondary librarian. The elementary teachers joined the secondary teachers for the second day of professional development which focused on using the MacBook OSX operating system and its suite of software. Two Apple Distinguished Educators visited the school and led each of those sessions. A secondary teacher led a similar session on the Windows Vista operating system. The Information Literacy Committee along with input from the faculty determined the relevant content for these sessions. The Information Literacy Committee also oversees a series of professional development sessions held once a week for twenty minutes. Usually, IST teachers lead these voluntary sessions, called Tech 20, designed for staff, administrators, and teachers. The content for each session comes from one of the many skills outlined in the key IST Technology Skills for Teachers. Professional development opportunities like those discussed here are enriching experiences but not fulfilling enough. Teachers also need time to explore, reflect, work in groups, share ideas, and put their new skills and knowledge into the curriculum. In other words, they need ongoing, job-embedded professional development. Currently, there is no such program like this at IST.//

Use and Integration of Technology in Teaching
//How does technology supports teaching and learning at IST? We can use technology as both a delivery tool and a learning tool. Software like Planbook and the Microsoft Office suite, for example, can deliver information and improve personal productivity. Specialized software, like Data Logger Pro, Geometer’s Sketch Pad, and GarageBand are learning tools that we can use for creative problem solving. In the elementary school, technology is integrated into the PYP and students attend one specialized IT class per week. Because roughly 40 students in each grade level share a classroom computer lab with 10 computers, two or more students often need to share their time on desktop computers. Teachers and students use interactive whiteboards in the classroom to share information with the entire class and engage interactivity. In the secondary school, students do not have a classroom computer labs. Three classrooms have an interactive whitelboard. In the secondary classrooms, students and teachers share one desktop computer connected to a digital projector which is most often used for group viewing, researching information, and word processing. To get the entire class on computers they need to book one of the five computer labs. Classes with more than 15 students are limited to labs 1 and 2 which have 23 computers each. The other labs have 15 computers or less. Although technology is integrated into the different subject areas, students in the MYP also take an IT class one semester where they learn about technology concepts and operations, tools for collaboration and communications, digital citizenship, and programming through their work with Legominds robotics. In the other semester they take Design Technology (DT) and learn how to design and manipulate three-dimensional objects.//

Educational Philosophy
//The first sentence of IST’s educational philosophy reads, ‘Our school is a friendly place where the needs of the student come first.’ It goes on to emphasize the benefit of working together in teams, thinking creatively and critically, making sound judgements, and applying knowledge in real life situations. The philosophy states that ‘teachers appreciate that individual students learn differently, so they use a wide range of teaching methods and assessment strategies.’ And it emphasises that our students ‘…reflect on how different people in the world can learn from each other.’ How does the use and integration of technology at IST support this philosophy? If technology at IST is used primarily as a delivery tool (finding information and word processing), then it does not support our educational philosophy well. On the other hand, if we are using technology primarily as a learning tool to facilitate creativity and innovation, critical thinking, problem solving, decision making, communications and collaboration then it supports our educational philosophy well. Recent learning activities in both schools suggest that we do use technology as a learning tool. The discussions that unfolded in the grade 8 mathematics wiki, the student work and comments in posted in blogs in secondary art and grade 4, the reflections and thoughts recorded in voicethreads in pre-kindergarten, grade 2, and grade 4 all exemplify technology use supporting our educational philosophy. They do not however show a well integrated use of technology for activities like these tend to be short-term and unusual. They need to be the ongoing and usual way of teaching and learning to support our educational philosophy well.//

Approach to Teaching and Learning
//IST is an International Baccalaureate (IB) World School. We offer all three IB programs: Primary Years Program (PYP), Middle Years Program (MYP), and the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Program. The PYP and MYP both embrace an inquiry-based approach to learning. In this model, students develop a question of personal interest and take it through a six-step inquiry model that leads them from tuning in to a topic to eventually taking action on it. The IB program prepares students for university and encourages them to ‘ask challenging questions, learn how to learn, develop a strong sense of their own identity and culture, develop the ability to communicate with and understand people from other countries and cultures.’ The technology we have at IST can support our approach to teaching and learning. We have the kinds of technology – computers, software, and connectivity – to support meaningful instruction. We need to consider whether or not we have enough access to the technology to make the learning activities sustainable and meaningful.//

Technology Strengths
//IST introduced a lot of shiny new technology this year including interactive whiteboards, new desktop computers, and a networked printing system. In fact, a higher percentage of students have access to a variety of technology this year than any other year in the school’s history. When it comes to support and the use and integration of technology, IST has more than a few strengths to show.

• a comprehensive network (both wired and wireless) • an IT Coordinator, IT Manager, and team of technicians • an Information Literacy Committee • four computer labs and one portable laptop lab • interactive white boards throughout the elementary school • digital projectors throughout the entire school • a website that facilitates school-community and classroom communications • a networked printer system with 9 multi-function printers • a defined list of technology standards for IST • a laptop loaded with a standard suite of software for every teacher and administrator • a Web-based student information system for attendance and records
 * Technology Strengths at IST**

Improvements are planned for next year. We intend to install about 10 Promethean Activboards in secondary classrooms. Digital projectors will reside in every classroom. The DT lab will get 12 iMac computers the library have 23 iMac computers for instructional needs. The portable lab will have 10 more MacBook computers bringing the total to 25. We will renew our standard suite of software and add a typing program for grades K-5. More DVD players will be available so teachers will not have to play region-specific DVDs on their computers. And we will try to get more digital cameras in the hands of teachers and students.//

Technology Weaknesses
//Using and integrating all of this technology effectively and productively can be challenging. Not only does it need to operate well at all times but teachers and students need sound understanding of technology concepts, systems, and operations to leverage their power for learning. In the areas of support and use of technology, here are IST’s weaknesses.

• low bandwidth • unreliable wireless network • not enough time allocated in the work day and week to participate in professional learning • no ongoing, job-embedded ETPD program • low computer to student ratio, especially in the secondary classrooms • difficult to find a computer lab available for booking • not enough interactive whiteboards in the secondary school • a non-standard operating environment (Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OSX) • no eLearning platform • no portal for blogs, wikis, and social networking • no technology integration specialist teachers • using technology as a delivery tool not a learning tool • lack of expertise and knowledge of the Mac OS X and iLife • lack of expertise and knowledge of the Vista operating system and Microsoft Office//
 * Technology Weaknesses at IST**