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May 1, 1997
A Five-Year
Technology Plan Succeeds at Nathan Hale High School
by Currie Morrison
When people envision the future, there
seems to be little disagreement. We hear it from our
state governors in their Goals 2000 plan for the future
of education in America. We hear it from leading
futurists such as Alvin Toffler, author of the
best-selling books Future Shock and The Third
Wave. Everything we hear or read about the future
seems to be saying the same thing: future economic and
political success will be measured by our ability to
access and manipulate information.
Nicolas Negroponte, founder of the
magazine Wired and director of MIT's renowned
Media Lab, predicts that the vast majority of new jobs in
the next century will be related to information access.
Nations, states, towns, villages, schools, and
individuals that understand and act on this trend will
not only become leaders in society and commerce, they
will retain some control over their own lives.
The 100 million school-age children of
the United States deserve to be brought into the
information age. Not only the economic viability of our
nation but our political health will be measured by how
well we deal with issues such as equal access to
information and the technology of information in the next
few years. We, as parents and educators, must demand an
end to the limiting effects of isolation within our
schools and insure that every student has access, not
only to the world of ideas and information that
technology can provide, but also to the tools and skills
necessary to using that knowledge to build a better
world. Nathan Hale High School's six-year effort to merge
technology into the everyday fiber of the school has been
driven by our belief that we need to prepare our children
to be successful in the information age.
A long-term commitment
In 1991, Nathan Hale High School
adopted a five-year technology plan moving ourselves
toward what we believe will be the future reality. Our
plan focused on three main goals:
- Increasing communications within
our building (e-mail)
- Sharing files across platforms
(interoperability)
- Opening a connection to wide area
information access (the Internet)
Our concept of a technology future
embraced related educational enhancements such as
computer literacy and access to outside information from
within the classroom. It facilitated the restructuring of
our school, increasing interdepartmental teaching and
technology-enhanced vocational programs. It provided for
introducing new assessment tools and bringing in new
technology tools for learning. It called for increased
communications within the building and out of the school.
It encouraged professional collaboration, locally,
regionally, nationally, and globally. It provided paths
as we migrated toward outcome-based educational
performance indicators.
Technically these ideas required
something that had not been done in any school building
in our district. The building needed complete data wiring
to create an enterprise LAN (local area network) and an
outside connection that would bring the Internet and
information access to each teacher's desktop. To that
end, we ordered, where needed, a computer for every
teacher workstation.
After several years of installing
hardware and software, accompanied by constant training,
we were able to look back to see what had been
accomplished. A review of our five-year plan, which had
been adopted in the spring of 1992, provided several key
objectives for the continuing implementation of
technology into the "everyday fiber of
learning" at Nathan Hale. We were committed to equal
access to technology for all students, establishing our
Internet connection, using word processing and desktop
publishing at all levels, providing e-mail for staff and
students, making keyboarding a part of applied academics,
and networking all of our computers together.
Our accomplishments
- Students from all disciplines
word-process papers on a regular basis.
- Over 400 students have login
e-mail accounts, and twice that many take
advantage of web browsers and gopher applications
on our computers.
- Over 200 students have had some
experience in publishing on the Internet with web
home pages.
- Some students access the Internet
at school from home in off hours.
- Students are using World Wide Web
materials as a regular part of the curriculum in
science.
- Students are using advanced
applications to produce printed materials for the
school and the school district from our graphics
program.
- Our student newspaper publishes
both a hard copy and an on-line copy on the World
Wide Web.
- The radio station publishes the
Top 40 playlists and other materials about the
radio programs on the student-managed web site.
- Language arts students have used
the Internet to find real artists with whom to
communicate and collaborate over the Internet.
- Our disabled students have found
the Internet to be an outlet for increasing their
communication with fellow students both in the
building and outside the building.
- International cultural relations
have been enhanced by direct communications with
two high schools in Kobe, Japan.
- We house mirror sites of two high
schools on our web server at Hale.
- A community program has students
teaching senior citizens of the SPICE program how
to access the Internet
- Our daily bulletin is published on
e-mail, and 85% of our teaching staff access it
on a regular basis.
- Our communications goals emphasize
research, collaboration with other students, and
with research people in higher ed.
- Hundreds of students access our
eight labs on a daily basis for business
education, horticulture, language arts, science,
graphics, radio, TV, social studies, special
education, math, and Upward Bound.
The power of networking
Linking all of our computers together
within the building local area network (LAN) and further
linking our whole building to the outside world through a
wide area network (WAN) has created several economies of
scale. Though we have a world of information in every
classroom, we do not need a phone in each room with a
separate line or modem. These economies are achieved by
networking. Networking has blown down the walls of
information isolation so typical in American schools.
How we got people on board
Needless to say, our technology
implementation was not a one-person crusade, nor has
there always been a smooth road to "technology
Nirvana." However, some elements have played a
prominent part in creating what success we have enjoyed.
We spent considerable time paying
attention to the wants and needs of our parents and
faculty in our planning process. We knew that without
faculty and parent buy-in, the chances for successful
technology implementation would be low. We did an
experimental class that introduced students to
communications worldwide and surveyed their opinions on
what they liked or disliked about this approach to
information access. We built a small computer lab for
writing that emphasized cooperative learning techniques.
All this seemed to whet the appetite of students,
faculty, and parents alike.
Finally, we carefully prepared our
presentations in a professional and clear manner, with
well-respected faculty members taking their turns to give
their stamp of approval to the planning process and their
support for the basic ideas of the plan itself.
To learn more
Information about Nathan Hale's
technology project and other programs at Nathan Hale High
School is available from the Nathan Hale High School
World Wide Web site.
My
own web page has a much more detailed series of
papers including our tech plan, historical timeline,
network diagrams and a description of the network along
with other examples of how we use technology in the
classroom and across disciplines. East Coast users may
want to access
my other page.
E-mail: Currie Morrison
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