When a district has a nuclear power plant not two miles from one of its elementary schools, concerns about disaster recovery are bound to surface in technology discussions. Yet it took Mathew Swerdloff, director of technology for Hendrick Hudson School District, three tries and three years before he found a system he could trust for maintaining and archiving data.
Candace Hackett Shively was helping teachers maximize technology before anyone had even coined the title, "technology education integrator." The year was 2000, and Shively had already spent several years figuring out ways to bridge the gap between rapidly evolving technological applications and the educational field.
Teaching deaf students involves more than scholastics, especially in areas where the deaf population is much smaller than the national average. In Kentucky, for example, only 3 percent are deaf, compared with 10 percent nationwide, which makes it difficult for students to interact with deaf people outside of the perimeter of the school.
At Savannah Christian Preparatory School in Savannah, GA, high school students aren't staring out the window thinking about the future. Thanks to an elective course the school introduced last fall, they're learning the rudiments of a field that, for many, may well be the future.
Successful ed tech initiatives need comprehensive support, including ongoing professional development, administrative leadership, and speedy broadband service.
By adopting an "inverted" curriculum that favors standardized, web-based materials over the rigid rote of a textbook, an Arizona district has released the full talents of its teachers.
Doing the same thing but just more of it is an approach to scaling innovative programs that's virtually sure to fail. A new framework tells educators that size is only one of several dimensions to consider.
At the Los Angeles Unified School District, which has a highly publicized green initiative involving building design and vehicle fuel conversion, Vickie Frederick, director of network operations, is immersed in two pilot efforts. One involves reducing the power draw of computers, and the other focuses on reducing the number of printers in use, to cut back on both power usage and toner usage.
How do you stop a pandemic? Seven centuries after the Black Plague wiped out a third of Europe's population, scientists are still working on a reliable answer to this evergreen question. But is it the right question? Asking how we stop a pandemic requires that one has already begun. Any elementary school teacher who makes all her pupils wash their hands after playing in the dirt at recess and any parent who insists his or her kids practice proper hygiene knows the more important question to ask is: "How do you prevent the pandemic from starting in the first place?"
I JUST SPENT HALF a day on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development website (OECD). Specifically, I was looking at the nearly 50 charts and graphs showing comparisons among countries on all things broadband, from total subscribers to percentage of fiber connections.