MEDIATECH SITE

Curriculum Overview	General Info Elem Middle	Mentorships
Contact	Meet the Elem. Staff	How the Parents Can Help
How Teachers Can Help	Student Portal	LinkServ

GENERAL INFORMATION, MEDIATECH ELEMENTARY:

The MediaTech program is part of a general Media Literacy Program in Concord's Elementary Schools. Media Center Specialists join with Technology Media Specialists to work with students on a weekly basis. Student in first to fifith grade engage in about 40 lessons throughout the year.

The challenge for all staff is to:

1. Collaborate on curriculum design. For example to see research, whether in a computer lab or in a media center, as involving the same skills.
2. To focus on meaningful uses of technology that stress critical thinking and life skills.
3. To establish research habits and approaches that will provide a foundation to all future work.
4. To create parallels between classroom activities and media activities. To work with classroom teachers to design exercises that support their classroom's content focus.

The program was started in 1998/1999 school year. Media Specialists and MediaTech Staff are regularly collaborating as our curriculum is reassessed and improves.

GENERAL INFORMATION, MEDIATECH MIDDLE SCHOOL:

The possibilities are endless and the excitement is high. Our Rundlett program has two "fronts":

1. TECHED: Our three TechEd teachers, Jim Harvey (6), Matt Saranian, and Rick Bragg (8), complete units on Powerpoint, Excel, CAD, Lego Mindstorms, and Digital Cameras.
2. ILA (INTEGRATED LANGUAGE ARTS/TECHNOLOGY): Two staff members, Bill Ryan and Jim Welch, use wireless laptops to engage inintegrated lessons in "core classrooms" with classroom teachers.

More news coming as this exciting new opportunity evolves.

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HOW YOU CAN HELP:

We need substitute teachers. This program creates a unique need for subs with some technology skills. We will train. Please contact Steve if interested. Retirees welcome!

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STAFF TRAINING:

We have a serious committment to training. Schedules will be posted and opportunites, at many sites, will be available. Check out our full tech site.

PARENT IDEAS:

So many guardians (and teachers) struggle with teaching their children how to use computers properly and effectively. This is especially true with Internet use.

Hopefully we can form a healthy partnership with parents to stress the essentials. Nobody wins when children see their computers primarily as toys. Here are a few examples of how we can help.

• Preparing for Research: Students do not get on to the computer until they map out their research goals with a web or outline. We use a program called Inspiration that visually organizes ideas. It is very effective.
• Research: Students in elementary school, as a whole, are not that productive when challenged to find something on the Internet. Search engines like Google, Altavista, HotBot, and Northern Light are great, but are not that useful for elementary school research. All students in the MediaTech program are taught to use our student portal. Students are taught how to relate topics and how to do keyword searches. We do not allow use of full-fledged search engines during MediaTech time unless a student has exhausted all other routes. We recommend that you likewise start with your children at our site.
• Databases and Spreadsheets: We are really stressing that a computer can organize your thoughts and prepare you to present. Knowledge of databases and spreadsheets are essential.
• Keyboarding: We do not have enough quality time in MediaTech to do keyboarding. We urge classroom teachers and parents to do keyboarding with their children. There are many excellent packages on the market. We do some keyboarding, but time limits us. We also believe that it is OK for parents to type children's reports. Caveat -- type them verbatim with errors included. The time spent typing is not necessarily quality time. Editing is a far more valuable life skill. So if time is a constraint... parent should type away!
• Word Processing: We do not do very much word processing. Students have many opportunities to learn word processing elsewhere so we do not consider it a high priority item for our curriculum (many teachers do it in their classrooms). We do teach students some key formatting skills through the memorization of acronyms, for example, teaching paragraph formatting though "TAB" (tab at the beginning), "RAP" (return at the end).

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TEACHER IDEAS:

Many of our programs do not take place in the "core curriculum classroom". We urge our teachers to utilize your students skills, contact us for help (curriculum design consultations, mentorships), and use technology in a best practice manner.

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CURRICULUM DESIGN:

Look at our curriculum overview. Students in grades 1 to 2 move through a series of steps every year from Basics to Planning to Office to Presentation. Students in grades 3 focus upon keyboarding and students in grades 4 to 5 learn through challenges. Middle school students learn through a approach that involves skills (TechEd) and application (ILA's).

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LINKSERV:

One of the most exciting new tools this year is our LinkServ. The Linkserv allows students and teachers alike to share from one another's research. Here is an example of how it works:

Teacher A is home at night preparing a lesson on the American Judicial System. She is searching the web and has come up with some excellent sites. Content that is far better than any textbook she, and her students, have access to in her classroom. The teacher wants to share those links.

TUpon arrival to school (or during that evening from home) the teacher goes to the LinkServ WWW Site, and enters her site (requiring a basic password - contact Steve Rothenberg). It takes about one minute per WWW link. Easy!

The next day she takes her students to the lab. Those students go to the LinkServ sites and search either by AMERICAN JUDICIAL SYSTEM or by both AMERICAN JUDICIAL SYSTEM and TEACHER A. In the first case the student will get all sites entered in the system, even if they were entered by another teacher. In the second case, the students will only get TEACHER A's links.

This web database technology is phenomenal. It bypasses all the gatekeepers and gives teachers unprecedented power to publish.

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CONTACT

District Technology Coordinator Steve Rothenberg
sroth@csd.k12.nh.us
16 Rumford St.
Concord NH 03301
603.225.0811
603.226.2187 fax

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