technology hub: A cost effective and educationally sound method for the integration of technology into schools, The

This article discusses the establishment of a technology Hub within a school system. It outlines the administrative, academic, and social benefits that such a technology center will provide. The impact of technology on testing, record keeping, foundational skill building, and tutoring are some of the critical areas explored in the work.

In this article the author argues that technology must be viewed as a tool that provides the means by which educators can better enhance their abilities to teach and their students' abilities to learn. In order for this to occur school districts must learn how to effectively allocate funds budgeted to improve their technological capabilities.

The article shows how by establishing a working Hub, that serves as the heart of the technology framework, funds can be effectively utilized through a system of shared resources that benefit all areas of the school environment.

Technology has become an integral part of curricula throughout the country. Across the nation school districts have spent literally millions of dollars in attempts to enhance their capabilities and provide their students with the latest technological advancements. Committees have been established and workshops have been organized, all in an effort to harness the sprawling giant known as technology. It is a never-ending task and schools will continue to expend these funds and will continue to develop plans to update their technological capabilities.

In the final analysis though, it must be understood that technology is a tool. It is a means by which educators can better enhance their abilities to teach and their students' abilities to learn. Realizing this, schools need to determine how to spend their funds wisely and how to effectively channel the efforts of their dedicated people.

How can schools best utilize technology? This is an important question. The answer lies is the development of a technology center within the school that functions as a working Hub. This Hub can serve as the heart of the technology framework within the school. From this Hub, technology can reach out and into each and every classroom. In order for this to occur two foundations will need to be laid. First, the Hub must have a direct link into these classrooms. To accomplish this link all classrooms must be equipped with compatible computers. Secondly, in addition to these shared classroom computers, each student must possess a personal laptop computer with the capability to link directly into the school's technology Hub. These laptop computers will allow the students to tie into the main Hub, either while at school, or when at home. They will give the students in essence twenty-four hour access to information and resources via the Hub.

This Hub can serve many different administrative, academic, and social purposes.

Administrative Benefits

Testing

Since the Hub will allow direct contact with any classroom within the building, teachers can utilize this center to set up examinations weeks in advance and on test day simply link to the Hub and electronically transport the examination to their classroom computers or to the students' laptops directly. In addition, as testing becomes more centralized students will be able to take examinations at any point, once they have mastered the course materials. No longer will it be necessary for every student to take every test at the same predetermined time.

Record Keeping

Record keeping can be greatly simplified with central grading files that the Hub can provide. By using grading technology packages teachers will be afforded the opportunity to instantly update their students' progress without performing tedious computation tasks.

Academic Benefits

Developing Foundational Skills

It is an educational fact that students learn at different paces. Since students will have almost instant access around the clock, and since computers never tire, or run out of instructional time or patience, students are free to repeatedly work on those concepts or skills that they have yet to master. The Hub can provide students with drill and practice lessons that will allow the students to overcome academic deficiencies in privacy. No longer will students decline extra help, or be afraid of being stigmatized as "stupid or slow" because of their repeated questions in class, or their inability to initially understand a complex concept.

Tutoring

The Hub also provides students with the capability to sit and work on their own, or to electronically seek help from peers or teachers. As such, the Hub can be effectively designed to work not only as a technology resource focal point, but as a tutorial center as well. It can provide both group and one-on-one help.

In the Hub, peer tutoring can also be developed and students trained to help one another, either in person or through electronic interaction. Through a conscious effort on the part of teachers, peer tutors can be available for students at every different learning and ability level. This is crucial since students will more likely seek out help from tutors that come from a wide mix of the student population, and not just from those labeled as "computer nerds."

Assignments and Lesson Plans

The Hub can also serve as a place where students can do homework or work on projects that can be stored for future access. With centralized storage capabilities there will be less of a possibility for a student's work to be lost or misplaced. This means that students will develop better organizational skills.

With information and research materials at their fingertips the Hub will serve as an academic center for both teachers and students alike. Again, all of this can be accomplished on either an individual or group basis.

The Hub's capability to allow students to work at their own pace will also mean that teachers will be afforded the opportunity to establish daily lesson plans that will meet the academic needs of each student that they teach, from the academically gifted to those needing more help. It will give educators the ability to design these lesson plans based upon students' learning styles, multiple intelligences, learning modalities, or even their right or left-brain based talents. In addition, it will allow these teachers the option of providing an exciting array of both individual and group based assignments. Teachers and students can utilize the Hub during the school day through scheduled classroom time, during scheduled appointments when students have free time, or even at nights online. Therefore, the assignments can be completed at different times during the day or night.

Inter-District Benefits

Once established, these Hubs can be utilized between schools within larger distrios. Links between different school districts can be established as well. This ability to communicate and interact with other technology Hubs will allow resources to be pooled and shared on a district, state, or even possibly national level. Shared resources will mean less overall expenditures for school districts faced with funding problems and the inability to provide their students with the latest technology. Shared resources will also mean that schools will be able to provide enhanced learning opportunities for all students regardless of their socio-economic levels.

New Technology

With the Hub in place school districts will reap many rewards. An example of this is the fact that they will be able to upgrade to the latest technology more easily and more cost efficiently and stay on the cutting edge of the ever-changing world of technology. Antiquated software can be updated or simply discarded. With a central processing system, duplication can be almost eliminated. Purchasing of new hardware and software will become more cost efficient as well. Input from teachers and students can be more effectively channeled in helping to make these decisions. With limited resources not being as crucial a problem, decisions to purchase software will no longer be on a do or die basis. Because they have allocated limited funds from their budgets teachers often are forced to use what they had purchased, even if the product does not meet all their instructional expectations. This will no longer be the case. A beneficial by product of all of this is the fact that as educators become more familiar and more comfortable with using the Hub and its technology, they will become more proficient at it. Eventually, instead of constantly relying on technology experts, these teachers, by integrating the various technologies into their lesson plans, will gain a greater expertise of these technologies. This means that school technology experts can then be freed up to address more important system-wide problems.

The newest technological advances will no longer be seen as budgetary obstacles for schools to overcome in order to provide their students with the latest innovations. Instead, schools will be poised to anticipate and better utilize new breakthroughs. As technology improves, so will the school's capability to delivery it to its students.

Teaching and Learning

With each and every improvement learning will increase as well. For example, districts will be able to explore innovative technological advancements such as the concept of "the virtual book". This technology will someday allow educators to download any book, or any written work of literature instantly onto a screen. The material can then be utilized for teaching and eliminated once the lesson is completed. This technological marvel will soon become a reality, and it will greatly change and improve teaching methodologies and strategies. With its inception schools will be better able to reallocate funding for textbook materials. Virtual books will almost eliminate the need to store massive amounts of print materials within the school. Libraries will become transformed from housing areas into better learning environments. Librarians will become even better facilitators for student research.

Instead of dreading the overwhelming financial constraints such a wondrous innovation will entail, schools could embrace these kind of breakthroughs. With shared resources through the technology Hub schools will reap the benefits from such educational technological changes that will occur within the next decade.

Web Pages

The Hub can also be utilized to establish web sites for schools, teachers, and students. These web sites can be utilized for more effective teacher-to-student communication as well as student-to-student, and school-to-school interaction.

Online Teaching Strategies

The Hub can provide more opportunities to create shared learning environments within the school, while at the same time employing strategies that are already being utilized by students on their own. We know that students today spend many hours at home dialoguing with their friends via e-- mail, instant messaging, and chat rooms. The Hub can tap into these tendencies. Through chat rooms and bulletin boards teachers can radically change not only how students learn, but their desire to do so. Homework can be posted and students and parents can be kept apprised and updated on assignments on a daily basis. With e-- mail for example, teachers can contact students privately to make sure they are on task.

The evidence is clear. As more and more schools around the country are offering online courses and are utilizing the web for instruction, students are more and more buying into the process. This is a generation that has come to see the computer as integral to their lives as telephones or microwaves. Having literally grown up with this technology, they have no hesitation or fear of using it. Online course offerings mean that learning can become more than an 8:00 to 3:00 concept. The possibilities are almost limitless. A centralize technology Hub can make all of this possible and provide teachers and students alike with around the clock access.

Teaching Methodologies

As teachers integrate technology into their classrooms, educational strategies and methodologies will change as well. Team planning across interdisciplinary thematic approaches will provide for a more integrated curriculum. Teachers will begin to stop seeing themselves as isolated educators, and will begin to see themselves as part of an educational team. Such changes will cause ripple effects throughout the curriculum and the school itself. Shared ideas among teachers will lead to better instruction and in turn, increased critical learning. Greater learning partnerships will be developed between teachers and teachers, teachers and students, and students and students. All of this will be possible because teachers will have more time in their schedules to implement such changes.

In addition to changes in teaching strategies and methodologies, other changes will occur as well. By better understanding technology teachers will be able to take a more hands on approach in software selection. The immediate benefits of this are obvious. By not relying on a technology curriculum expert or the librarian to make purchases, teachers can select software that will be better suited for their classroom curriculum. In fact, as teachers use and become more familiar with available software options, they will become more involved in selecting, and even developing, appropriate software packages that they will be able to integrate into their curriculum. Changes in classroom teaching styles will also mean selection of more interactive based software. A major benefit of active teacher involvement in the selection and utilization of software will be the ability of the teacher to select different software packages based upon their students' individual learning levels. Customization to student learning styles or modalities will not only be possible, but encouraged. This in turn will lead to less frustration on the part of both teachers and students.

An Encouraging Environment

No matter how sophisticated no form of technology is useful if students do not have the capability to effectively utilize it, or do not have an inclination or interest to do so. The Hub, will serve as an ongoing center for activity. As such it cannot be seen as a sterile place with a bunch of isolated computers. The Hub must be a lively and active environment that provides students with both the expertise and the desire to use technology on a daily basis. There should be a vivid use of colors throughout the center for example. The furniture as well in the Hub should be inviting and professional. The chairs are key. They should be comfortable and plush.

In addition to creating this active and lively academic environment, one section of the Hub should be utilized as a get away zone where students can take a breather and discuss what they have found with other students. Here nice tables, chairs, and oversized couches can be provided. Food and drink might also be available to the students if deemed appropriate.

Although some may argue that students will see the center as simply a place to hang out, although this by itself may even prove beneficial, it is easy to point out that students can be kept on task through effective and yet challenges assignments and by electronically monitoring their actions.

A Place That Breeds Success

In order to demonstrate that hard work leads to success, it is important for students to see concrete and visual evidence of this fact. As students utilized the Internet and other forms of technology, their research findings can be posted around the Hub under theme headings. These themes in turn could be linked to larger themes. The result will be an ever-changing representation of academic excellence.

Conclusions

When this welcoming, almost nurturing environment is created, students will no longer view technology simply as isolated visits to a lab, or stolen moments within a classroom to complete very specific, and often boring, assignments. Instead technology will be seen as an avenue for exploration. This exploration, if guided properly, can lead to experimentation. Both of these will in turn lead to higher levels of learning. In the final analysis, technology will have served its purpose. It will have indeed become a tool for learning.

Conzemius, A., and O'Neill, J. (2002). Building Shared Responsibility for Student Learning. Alexandria, Virginia: Association for supervision and Curriculum Construction.

Shared responsibility is something built from within a whole school, and the authors seek to present a practical framework for building, effective shared responsibility. It involves the following major concepts: (1) Focus - a common vision, mission, values, and expectations that provide clarity ad lead to new levels of performance, (2) Reflection - a commitment to test assumptions, learn from data, and then adjust practices accordingly, and (3) Collaboration - the process of developing relationships where all work toward the same objectives and rely on each other to achieve goals that are embraced. It is always a shared responsibility because student learning is an ongoing activity - a journey and not a destination. This research -based resource provides a map in the form of effective structures, systems, and policies.

JOSEPH S.C. SIMPLICIO PH.D.

P.O. Box 1132

Shepherdstown, West Virginia 25443

Copyright Project Innovation Summer 2002
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved