BRONX COALITION COMMUNITY SCHOOL FOR TECHNOLOGY

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Technology Mission

The technology mission of Bronx Tech is to provide students with the cutting edge skills in computer science and web publishing for a more technologically advanced society. We will focus on computer science and slowly integrate other technologies into our mission and curriculum as they become more available. With out present human and technological resources every student should acquire proficiency in the following areas:

• Operating Systems
• Word Processing
• Spreadsheets
• Desktop Publishing
• Databases
• Presentations

Our vision is to acquire the technology and skills necessary to provide students with proficiency in technology areas that impact their lives and are useful in a competitive society. We would like to give our students the opportunities to explore careers in the technology, via internet, desktop publishing, Database Management, Programming, Internet Research, and Web Mastering. Thus our goal is to acquire the skills and technology to integrate the following speciality workshops into our curriculum:

• Computer Troubleshooting
  
• Network Administration
  
• Internet Research
  
• Web Page Design & Maintenance
  
• Programming

Current Abilities

Presently, Bronx Tech has a Dell lab with approximately 25 computers, two networked laser printers, a Windows NT file server and a T-1 line. We are running an NT server with WIN 95 on all workstations, MSOffice 97, Mavis Beacon and we recently acquired PageMill and Frontpage Xpress for the Dell lab. We have a room with 10 Dell computers that are not connected to the server.

We also have a room with approximately 15 LC 575 Mac computers without NIC cards, one 600 DPI laser printer, 1 stylewriter color printer, 10 Power Mac 5200's, with 1 Power Mac 6500, most of which do not have Ethernet cards. Nearly all classrooms have at least 2 free standing Macintoshes of varying age and usefulness with a black and white or color Stylewriter printer. All Macintoshes have either 8 or 16 MB's of RAM.

Our Macintoshes run on system 7 operating system, with At Ease security software, Claris Works applicaton software.

12 classrooms are wired for internet.

Hardware Needs: Our needs are as follows for us to be connected to the internet:

• A G3 Mac lab with 35 computers
• Two 600 DPI Lexmark Optra S1620 Laser printers
• Two digital cameras
• A digital video camera
• two video capture cards

Software Needs: We will need the following:

• HTML Editor
  
• Hyperstudio (Presentations)
  
• FTP software
• Adobe Photoshop

Some cites for free software include: Shareware.com, download.com, educationindex.com

Building a Technology Culture

To effectively integrate technology into Bronx Tech we may take some of the following steps:

• _{Form a technology committee that meets once per month}
• _{Train a group of 5-7 students to administer the labs}
• _{have said students maintain the labs and provide student or teacher training before and after school.}
  
• _{Develop a Full-time system adminstrator position for graduates}
  
• _{After school per session training of teachers done by students and tech coordinator}
  
• _{Teachers must write a proposal of how they would like to integrate technology into classroom}
  
• _{Integrate Computers into subject area classes}
  
• _{Introduce different types of highly interesting and useful software}
  
• _{Introducing subject area models of computer based projects}
  
• _{Develop responsibilities around researching internet for free software, training, career, to post on school bulletin boards.}
  
• _{Promote the fact that understanding technology is in students best interest}
  
• _{Promote the fact that teachers are receiving a wealth of experience for their futures}
  
• _{provide all student with the skills to build their own home page that will be hosted by the school}
  
• _{have students train parents and give them a web site}
  
• _{have parents involved in the curriculum via editing work, taking part in web discussions and through a list surf}
  
• _{assign home work over the internet}
  

INTEGRATION OF TECHNOLOGY ACROSS CURRICULUM

The Bronx Tech Curriculum is composed of 5 periods of Math, Science, English and History and 2 periods per semester of Art and Computers. Computers are a separate course from the curriculum and students were not required to do a portfolio presentation in technology or attend summer school if they failed computers. As a result students do not take computers seriously.

In addition to the above steps in building a tech culture, we must also look to have computer instruction integrated into the subject areas. In other words, subject teachers and the computer teachers must develop computer based projects together. This will teach students and teachers how to use the technology simulateously while doing work for both subject area and technology classes. At least 1 class per week of Math/Science and Humanities must be held in the computer room to intergrate technology into these classes and to accustom students/teachers to using the technology. Projects between computer instructor and subject teacher must be developed with the intent of teaching and connecting both technology to all subject areas. This will reduce the vandalism of computers, improve the grades, knowledge and sense of accomplishment within the school.

TEACHER TRAINING

We plan to give teachers on using the software. Some of the workshops are as follows:

Workshop (for teacher credit)

• Brief discussion on what students need to learn in technology, how will they learn it, and how we will teach it under our present structure or what changes will we have to make to benefit students and improve the culture.
  
• Integrating technology into the content area (will we require computer based projects using the resources of the labs or will each teacher have a day of the week in the lab for instruction and lab hours before and after school)
• Computer literacy: Network, username, passwords, domain, desktop, explanation of all icons (MSOffice Suite, etc.)
• Logging in and out of a network for securing your files
• Directory structure, creating, saving and deleting files and folders for all programs

Workshop 2:Word Processing

Workshop 3: Spreadsheets

Workshop 4: Power Point

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