West+Chester+Area+School+District

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Dr June Garwin: Director of Information Technology who is the supervisor of K-12 Information Technology for the West Chester Area School District. They are not part of the Philadelphia school system; but are a suburban school region about 30 miles west of Philadelphia, consisting of three high schools (9-12), three middle schools (6-8) and ten elementary schools (K-5) that service about 12,000 students. Please feel free to visit their website for more information about their schools and area.

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**Pennsylvania DOE Initiative:** Classrooms for the future- each class was installed with an Interactive Whiteboard, teachers using Smartnotebook software or Promethean. Carts of laptops were also issued to all classrooms in schools for all years. <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 140%;">Teachers required to complete 30 hours of online professional development per year.

<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 140%;">Under Dr June Garwin's leadership, netbooks by DELL have been introduced to all 10th grade students in the region. They pay $30 insurance for the laptop and sign a contract. The netbooks have a light on the back, letting the teachers know when they are on the internet, or certain programs are open. These laptops can be shut down by the teachers. <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 140%;">Video conferencing is used to offer courses like Italian.

<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 140%;">__West Chester Initiative__

<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 140%;">They are currently in the second year of a pilot program where we have given some High school students individual Netbooks (laptops) by DELL to use for the year. Computers are used in the middle schools in the STEM courses in various ways that are dependent on teacher. The science program in the elementary schools is new this year but teachers are very enthusiastic about the hands-on approaches.Students in the elementary schools have carts of Macbooks, along with 2-3 stand alone Mac Computers in each classroom. Interestingly,the elementary math program includes software, but few, if any, teachers use it. They have required computer science courses for all middle school students and computer science electives for students in grades nine through twelve.

** Laura Mendell – Mathematics ** East High School The school has been refurbished completely 5 years ago, is completely wireless and an octagonal shape, catering for Years 10-12. The playing fields and facilities are magnificent- a far cry from inner city Bronx. Current semester unit: Algebra I-academic module for students intending on going to college. Students must pass a module before moving on to subsequent modules in Mathematics strand ie: Algebra II. One of laura’s favourite sites for resources is //kahn academy// for mathematics resources.

__ Lesson observed: __ __ Topic : Linear and quadratic equations __ __ Yr 10-11-12 __ Students worked with netbooks (own laptops) in class. When I talked to students about how they were using laptops in class, they said that the teachers mainly focussed on Microsoft applications eg: word, excel and moodle for warm ups in maths. Many students did not have their own laptops with them, and had to resort to using the cart of laptops stowed at the back of the room. Like at home, it took some time to get started on the coursework, as students had to get out laptops and get them started. The students are obviously used to working in groups and had no problems in moving desks to sit four in a group facing each other- a definite advantage of laptops compared to stationary computers. The students were given a handout, and asked to research a topic of interest in relation to ,that could be graphed. The students worked happily, developing their data and presenting it effectively. They were engaged and the work was student centred, as opposed to teacher centred, which it still is in so many classes.