Creating a vision
Ideas for developing a strategy for technology integration
 
Ideas from Chicago and Detroit:

 

Bogan High School prepares students for the world of work.

Von Steuben Center supports strong math and science curriculum with technology.

Best Practice High School uses technology as a tool.

Resources from other areas:

K-12 Technology Planning at State, District, and Local Levels
http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed393448.html

Systemic Technology Planning to Support Education Reform (STPSER)
http://www.ed.gov/pubs/EPTW/eptw2/eptw2e.html

 
A workplace-oriented approach
Bogan High School seeks to give students technology skills that will make them highly employable, whether or not they go on to college. The school seeks staff and programs that will keep their offerings up to date, featuring the software and other technology areas that are strong in the marketplace. Principal Linda Pierzchalski explains:
"With our technology classes, what we are trying to do is work with business and see what business wants with kids when they graduate from high school, and these are the kinds of software packages we are teaching them [students]."
A college preparatory approach
Von Steuben Center seeks to prepare a diverse student body for college admissions, with particularly strong preparation in mathematics and science.
Technology is viewed as an inevitable part of doing mathematics, science, and all kinds of other professional and learning activities in the years ahead. The first goal in the school's 1999-2000 school improvement plan reads "improving the instructional program through greater use of technology and improved curriculum."
A student-centered approach
Best Practice High School was established with the explicit goal of creating an educational experience that is student centered, experiential, holistic, authentic, expressive, reflective, social, collaborative, democratic, cognitive, developmental, constructivist, and challenging.
Based on their experience using word processing tools in teaching writing, lead teachers Tom and Kathy Daniels brought to this enterprise the conviction that technology could support these best-practice principles. Tom Daniels explained:

"Be careful to see it [technology] as a tool to get information--to help kids learn--rather than the end itself. We think technology is a part of what we call our multiple intelligence approach. Some kids can't learn through a book, but they like learning through a computer, or might learn through a camera or might learn through artwork or something like that."

The school does not teach technology for its own sake but rather uses technology tools to support academic learning within the Best Practice model. In the words of one of the school's teachers:

"Word processing, the use of word processing, and the power of being able to use a computer to even put together a paper, that is something that our kids need to have . . . we have almost all of the latest word processing programs along with spreadsheets, and they [the students] are learning how to do that. We use spreadsheets in physics. They do graphing on computers too, so, I mean, these are all forms of technology that I think our kids need to be exposed to."