The Past, Present and Future of Chapin Technology
Excerpts with permission from the
TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE REPORT (Zelda Owens)
The Board of Trustees
The Chapin School, March 10, 2003
SUMMARY
In the 2002-2003 school year, Chapin has begun to leverage its enormous investments in hardware and software by developing an integrated technology curriculum for both the students and faculty. With the wireless network, website, and security systems in place, the Technology Department is now able to support initiatives that foster student and faculty development in both formal and informal learning environments. Projects such as the Pioneer Program, Student Staff /Tech Helper Program and the Class 6 Laptop Program have been infused in the technology life of the Chapin community. We look forward to these efforts propelling Chapin's technology mission of "integrating technology appropriately into the curriculum and throughout the school to help empower the girls to become technologically proficient citizens of the 21st Century."
SYSTEMS OVERVIEW
Staffing
Chapin has approximately 6 people in the Technology Department. Three staff members are 12-month employees and three are faculty.
As of Fall 2002, we have a help desk in Room 39 that provides technical support between the hours of 8:00am and 5:00pm. This help desk supplements the support system that provides network services in Room 412. The support is provided in a formal organized fashion that allows students and teachers to request support. The support person on duty has the opportunity of solving problems.
To support the Web site, Chapin currently has a Web team consisting of four people: the CIO, the Director of Development, the Director of Publications, and the Assistant Head of School. This group manages all of the content on the Web site. The Web pages of www.chapin.edu are formally coordinated by the Development Department and Technology Department. The Web pages of gatornet.chapin.edu contain educational content. Several faculty members are working with the web team to manage the web pages for their curriculum areas.
the graphic below enlarges if you click on it
The following details (clockwise direction) will hopefully provide visitors and outsiders with an overview of the items pictured above. The following principles are essential aspects underlying the many changes that Chapin underway. 1) Faculty first (humanware) and faculty collaboration are essential to the success of our programs 2) Systems need to be in place so that hardware is tied to humanware 3) Leadership by tech committee is not necessarily the best way to effect change. Instead, leadership by administrative/tech collaboration may well be a better formula for achieving change.
GatorNet
Chapin's new GatorNet system provides an optimum environment for accessing files and e-mail from any home computer, Mac or PC. This system is widely used by the students and faculty alike.
Computer Licenses
Computer Licenses (Chapin, Fairfax, Berendsen, Stringfellow, Theunick) at Chapin provide a structure to reinforce an essential postulate of computer life within a school that the computer is a privilege and to provide a structure and avenue for students to make progress with skills and issues of tech honesty.For example earning a Fairfax license provides a girl with more time on GatorNet (90 minutes vs 60 minutes per day); to earn a Fairfax license, a girl must demonstrate the skill of using the web, finding graphics and text related to origin of a grandparent and cite sources via the proper URLs.
IT Infrastructure and Support
Chapin at this point in time has an excellent infrastructure in terms of hubs, network and wireless environment. We just made a major commitment in summer of 2002 to redo the hubs and wireless network, using an outside company, Shoregroup. The tech infrastructure at Chapin consists of new hubs and access points providing us with almost 100% universal wireless access.
Homework on the Web
Homework on the Web via Cluster Groups is new this year and provide teachers with easy to post web pages that are part of their GatorNet (First class) accounts. We are beginning to extend this flexible system to administrative functions and operations, from web pages that explain our calendar to a web page that highlights e-mail etiquette for faculty to web pages that enhance projects in the Development Office. The intranet.chapin.edu site will be repurposed to present student projects.
Pioneer Program
The Pioneer Program (Projectors, Diaries, Training etc.) is new this year and probably epitomizes the essential emphasis of humanware as the key component in the technology picture. The Pioneer Program provides a classroom projector to a faculty member as part of ongoing weekly training focused on learning software tools (PowerPoint, Inspiration, Spreadsheets etc.) with focus on a checklist of teacher projects and activities to complete (e.g. Web pages, projector usage).
Over 10 teachers during this first year of implementation meet weekly to work at computer skills and curriculum projects. Although this is voluntary, the Pioneer Program is linked to the classroom distribution of computer projectors. This underscores another crucial postulate of humanware: holding faculty to certain obligatory standards in terms of providing hardware such as projectors helps the transformation of a school community.
The Student Staff and Tech Helpers
This program provides girls with a pathway outside of classes to contribute to the technology well being of the school. These students take on tech jobs and help the school in various ways. This is a new innovation at Chapin will grow in 2003. The Student Staff consists of older students that are part of a leadership program assisting in the computer department and helping other students. There are younger students who also help out as part of a "tech helper" program.
2002 Wittenberg Door
This initiative is intended to be a symbolic place for the posting and awareness of technology rules, a crucial piece of the puzzle for every school in this day and age of web pages, software honesty, MP3 files and DVD movies. Chapin strives to be a community where tech guidelines and community respect Ð not security software Ð will serve as fundamental principles in computer usage. When issues arise, we will use the 2002 Wittenberg Door as dissemination location for rules and procedures as well as for making sure that the students agree to follow them.
Community Service
"Community Service via Technology" is an important theme, and we have launched an initial connection with a Multiple Sclerosis (MS) home in Boston. The plan is to connect with other MS and community service organizations.
Also launched this year is the online calendar feature at calendar.chapin.edu. They facilitate the announcement of events and posting of work orders. We see this feature to be very useful in the future for the entire Chapin community.
Room 39 Help Desk
This year Room 39 Help Desk has transformed into one common space for students and faculty to seek assistance. This central location, adjacent to one of the computer labs, is a key student/faculty asset for support.
Video Conferencing
Although we have had a videoconference unit in the multimedia room since 1998, the unit has been relocated to the faculty lounge to foster increased use among the faculty.
This is a high-res movie from an upcoming DVD called The Animatrix. The movie is mildly compressed- it's about 150MB. Potentially all our streaming movies will be nice and big like this (but at a 4:3 ratio) come July. (the instant-on speed will really only happen on our network; on a broadband connection it will take a few seconds to start of course).
This exciting technology pilot will allow all students in Class 6 an opportunity to develop thorough knowledge of computers and its use in the curriculum. The salient features of this program is as follows: Currently, Chapin's computer curriculum emphasizes students in the Lower School (K-3) as well as selected grades in the Middle School (5,6,7,9). In the Upper School, there is a rich array of computer course from which the students can select to supplement her education, including AP courses in Computer Science.
Streaming Videos to Support and Enhance the Curriculum
L I P
Class 6 Laptop Pilot Program Highlights
1) Laptops for all Class 6 girls starting Fall 2003
2) All laptops will be owned by Chapin school
3) Several training options will be presented to Class 6 faculty from March to September
4) Each faculty member will be asked to choose 1 of the various options to "complete the program"
5) A list of proficiency skills for Laptop Teachers will be produced by end of March vacation
6) The tech department budget will cover the acquisition of 60 laptops, batteries, etc.
7) September 2003 will be used as a transition month and month of preparation (e.g. in the Class 6 Computer Course, the girls would be exposed to an array of technical skills with laptop troubleshooting)
8) A member of the technology faculty will have the position of Laptop Curriculum Coordinator
9) Built into the 2003-2004 schedule are regular meetings for all Class 6 laptop teachers to convene weekly or biweekly; due to practical considerations, there might be two laptop periods so that teachers could attend one or the other
10) Projectors would be provided to many of the laptops classrooms but there would be some floaters
11) The Class 6 computer curriculum would change from True Basic to "Computer Proficiency Laptop Skills"
This program should not alter the existing Class 6 curriculum. The fact that the students will have laptops does not mean that they get used in every class. The role of the technology faculty who support the Class 6 laptop teachers is to provide ideas, suggestions and strategies for usage. Each teacher and team cluster will make final decisions about usage.
The Room 39 office and the sixth grade homeroom will be laptop headquarters for the program.
Student Development
One of the strengths of Chapin's program is to provide the students with a trusted, non-protective technology environment. Another strength involves the priority of faculty training and faculty support. A third strength involves a Lower School computer curriculum that is particularly rich, broad-based and effective.
Lower School students have a computer class once a week in the LS computer lab. The computer curriculum is based on studies occurring in social studies, math and science. The purpose of computer classes in the Lower School is to expose the girls to the use of technology and to teach them to use the computer system. We use a variety of manipulatives and software to enrich the curriculum. The classes are structured to be collaborative learning as well as having experiences with individual work.