As the school year winds down, I wanted to update everyone on the progress of our Apple implementation.
As you can see above, our seventh graders are already integrating technology into their everyday learning as part of the pilot program. In the above photo, 7K students are independently viewing photos and historical documents about Emmett Till, a Chicago boy who was murdered in 1955. Students had just completed reading the historical fiction novel Mississippi Trial, 1955 by Chris Crowe. Individual laptops allow students to complete this lesson at their own pace, and to investigate deeply the areas that interested them most. Some students chose to read trial transcripts from the FBI file while others spent more time reading the murderers' confession in a national magazine. Materials were organized in a Keynote presentation which students downloaded from our network onto their individual computers. Online resources were also accessed using the 7K portfolio in Nettrekker. This is a just one example of how MacBooks are changing how we can learn at St. Francis, even in a reading class.
MacBooks were also delivered to the full faculty beginning on May 20, 2009. Members of the Apple Implementation Team (Kerry Howard, Elaine Sage, Lisa Nagel, Joan Kitchie, Dan McKenna, and Lea Kelley) led two distribution sessions during which teachers learned the basics of their new computers. The team was very ably assisted by volunteers from 7K during the first session. All faculty members will attend an Apple-led all-day professional development session on the Mac OS X operating session following the end of the school year.
While more work remains to be completed over the summer, we are well on our way to enhancing our learning through technology. Teachers will attend more training on integrating technology into the classroom in August, and we expect to have our full fleet of laptops in all of our K-8 classrooms by fall of 2009.
To view more photos of our Apple program, click here or check out the photo album in the column to the right of this message.
As always, please feel free to contact Mr. McKenna or Miss Kelley if you have any questions about our laptop learning program.
Miss Kelley
