Technology

Speas is fortunate to have a wide range of technological devices that can benefit our students and staff. Use them to make your work easier. Use them to meet your students’ needs. Every teacher at Speas has a laptop. These should be used to help you with both academic and clerical tasks. Smartboards are located in all regular classrooms and the computer lab. Speas also has three rolling SmarBoards. Any problems with technology should be brought to the Technology teacher’s attention immediately.

Teachers: Teachers have a number of tools at their disposal:
Administrative: The Speas Elementary Blog contains daily AM Announcements and Special Messages. Weekly lesson plans and Weekly newsletters should be submitted by e-mail to Becky Rhodes. Each teacher has a web page. These are required to be updated on a quarterly basis. it is recommended that they be updated on a weekly basis for parents and include homework for the week and upcoming events.

Assessment: Accelerated Reader reports should be evaluated weekly and used to modify instruction and establish appropriate book/testing levels. SuccessMaker reports should be assessed weekly and used to guide instruction. STAR Reading Test data should also be used diagnostically and provide a basis for instruction. The media assistant will run and distribute these reports weekly and quarterly. Student results on Quartely Benchmark tests should be assessed through Blue Diamond and flexible groupings established to meet specific needs. Data on anticipated student performance is available through EVAAS.

Instruction: Students should receive instruction from the classroom teacher in the computer curriculum outlined in the standard course of study. Technology instruction will also take place in the computer lba under the direction of the technology teacher. All students should have a minimum of two sessions weekly on SuccessMaker (3-5) and WiggleWorks (K-2). One of these is a scheduled technology lab period. The other should take place in the classroom. Classes with smaller enrollments should be able to schedule more than one classroom session in the lab.

Students:
Students have the opportunity to use technology to support their educational experience. This is accomplished through the utilization of the Technology Lab, classroom computers, streaming video, video and digital cameras, Smart Boards, wiki's, blog's, the closed-circuit television system and television studio. The computer lab is also open four afternoons each week from 2:30-3:45 for students in grades 2-5.

Each classroom is expected to develop a schedule that provides students access to the network for computer assisted instruction. The in-classroom schedule should support a minimum of one additional computer session per week. As more computers become available they can be used for this purpose.

Classroom scheduling should also support access to the computer on a daily basis for Accelerated Reader testing. To assist with this, a new school-wide job, Classroom Technology Assistant, has been developed. These students, in grades 3-5, will be assigned to classrooms and will be available to help students with computer use during the day. Volunteers will also assist classroom teachers will testing logistics.

One of the goals of our program is to teach students to use technology as a tool for the acquisition and manipulation of information. The more opportunities we can provide to assist them, the more successful they will be. This means that teachers must be actively involved while their students are in the computer lab. They should be circulating, providing assistance, and monitoring what the children are doing.