MCNC

Mission:

The mission of Miller City-New Cleveland School is to establish and to improve the basic skills of all children. We exist to provide an environment that creates positive experiences that contribute to each child’s self-worth. We will foster a climate conducive to learning by encouraging high scholastic standards, good citizenship, and good attendance. It is our belief that all children can learn. It is our hope that through our efforts, our children will become responsible, contributing members of society.

Role of Technology in Education:

“Our students are entering a world in which 60% of the jobs will require technological competency, a world in which they must continue to update their occupational and technological skills in order to be successful. We must enable them to become technologically competent. We must take advantage of the capacity of technology to enhance our traditional classroom instruction and to engage our students in active learning.”

James L. Morrison, Microsoft scholar.

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act (2002) requires schools to place new emphasis ondeveloping students’ academic skills. This involves a research-based focus on practice in science, mathematics, language arts, and social studies. The NCLB Act also takes this emphasis one step further by requiring that students reach technological proficiency by the end of the eighth grade, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, family income, geographic location, or disability.

Technology must be an integral part of our students’ educational process. It is our mission to incorporate technology skills and standards into all facets of the educational environment. The role of technology in the Miller City – New Cleveland District can be broken down into three divisions, technology that supports district operations, technology that enhances student learning, and technology that improves teacher efficiency.

1. District Operations: Technology must provide the essential tools that allow the district to operate efficiently and give administrative staff access to all the information systems available. Student Information Software (DASL) and Financial Software are in use continuously. Virtually all communication is done by means of email or using access to online documents. In addition the Library Media Center has moved into an entirely electronic means for card catalog searches and signing out and returning books.

2. Student Learning: Technology provides students with the ability to accomplish a wide variety of assignments in a digital manner. MCNC also provides high school students the opportunity to take home laptops for educational use. Students are also to be exposed to a wide variety of applications and multiple operating systems. The tools provide our students with multimedia applications that make learning meaningful and enjoyable. Internet access is an important and integral portion of many subject areas. Programs such as Atomic Learning give our students, staff and district residents access to application tutorials and provide the skills for lifelong learning.

3. Teacher Efficiency: The task of a teacher is shifting from the provider of all knowledge to the coach or facilitator of learning and skill development. Textbooks no longer contain all the answers or can remain current with today’s rapidly changing informational society. Assisting teachers to provide information resources and technology tools to make their job more efficient can only help our students learning processes. Tools such as Turnitin and United Streaming have added greatly to a teachers arsenal of instructional tools. Grade book software allows them to do their traditional records in an electronic format. Soon teachers will be able to link academic content standards to their lesson plans and assessments.

Technology Standards:

The State of Ohio through the Department of Education provides Academic Content Standards in many areas. This past school year every teacher received his or her copy of these standards in Technology. These standards set up benchmarks of achievement and identify indicators of student progress towards these benchmarks. These seven Standards are:

1. The Nature of Technology: Students develop an understanding of technology; it’s characteristics, scope, core concepts and relationships between technologies and other fields.

2. Technology and Society Interaction: Students recognize interactions among society, the environment and technology, and understand technology’s relationship with history. Consideration of these concepts forms a foundation for engaging in responsible and ethical use of technology.

3. Technology for Productivity Applications: Students learn the operations of technology through the usage of technology and productivity tools.

4. Technology and Communication Applications: Students use an array of technologies that apply design concepts to communicate with multiple audiences, acquire and disseminate information and enhance learning.

5. Technology and Information Literacy: Students engage in information literacy strategies, use the Internet, technology tools and resources, and apply information-management skills to answer questions and expand knowledge.

6. Design: Students apply a number of problem solving strategies demonstrating the nature of design, the role of engineering and the role of assessment.

7. Designed World: Students understand how the physical, informational and bio-related technological systems of the designed world are brought about by design process. Critical to this will be the students understanding of their role in the designed world: its processes, products, standards, services, history, future, impact, issues and career connection

These seven standards relate directly to the Nation Education Technology Standards (NETS) put forth by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). The NETS standards form the basis of the eighth grade requirements to fulfill the NCLB act of 2002.

There are NETS standards for Administrators and for Teachers. These standards as well as a detailed checklist of essential technology skills for teachers are the basis for all Professional Development done within the District.

Vision:

Education is all about planning for the future. We teach children and adults because they need to learn not just for the present but for what lies ahead. We teach children to read and do math because they need it now and because they will need it more so in the future. Technology is very similar, we provide the tools of technology to accomplish what is needed now and also for students to be able to continue using technology for life long learning. Technology has been thrust upon us. No one working today can avoid using email or the Internet. School districts are no exception. Teachers, administrators and students have many facets of their day that require a computer. We are dependent upon them. That dependence will NOT lessen.

Present Status:

Administrators communicate by email, use DASL, work with the CCIP, and schedule all calendar information online. This requires that all administrators and support staff have access to a desktop workstation as their main business tool.  This past year six machines were purchased for that purpose and a library machine will need to be purchased this summer. We require teachers to enter grades and perform classroom attendance electronically.  Information between staff members and parents is often communicated through email. The Internet is used to develop and plan lessons, instructional material is accessed through many different digital pathways. Each teacher is provided with a laptop for instructional use. Tech Equity monies have provided those in the past but those funds are no longer available. Last summer (2004) six laptops were replaced and upgraded. Developing a schedule for laptop replacement for teacher and student machines is important.

Students prepare for many classes which require technology to complete assignments. The Pre-engineering lab is just one example. These windows XP machines allow students in “Project Lead the Way” to develop engineering principles and skills. Computer Assisted Design (CAD) is just one aspect. Students are using “Inventor” software that allows them to create 3 dimensional drawings such as parts for a tractor, truck, or boat and then assemble those parts into a complete object.  Computer Carts of laptops are used extensively in the elementary, middle school and the high school.  High school laptops are in their fifth year. These machines have taken a great deal of use and are in desperate need of replacement. High school students in particular are given frequent assignments using Word, Excel and PowerPoint as well as expectations of Internet access.  We have truly stretched the ability of these machines and are asking them to continuously do more and more. Multimedia projects are very demanding and students make the most of each opportunity to learn and grow.

Program demands and requirements continue to grow. In the elementary we have recently upgraded to a newer version of Accelerated Reader. This application gets heavy use by students in grades 1 through 8. The high school/middle school depends upon technology for a wide range of its programs. Word processing is assumed for all students, reports, essays and research are all technology dependent. Written assignments are checked for originality by submitting them to Turnitin.com. Online software tutorials are provided through our subscription to the Atomic Learning web site.

Teachers and students can request assistance through an online program called Inventory Resource Manager, or IRM. This allows the technology department to keep track of all problems and then assign them to the tech director, our hired technician, or to student technology assistants. The work requests are electronically recorded and follow ups are also digitally recorded and emails are sent to the persons submitting the work requests. New classes are being developed for Web Design and Video Production. These classes have been offered in the past but not since we have moved into the new facility.

The network in the new building has been functioning well. We have wireless access points spread throughout the building which allow us to connect at just about any point. There are still dead spots in certain areas, particularly the cafeteria and gymnasium. These access points are outdated and will need to be replaced in the very near future. Most were purchased four years ago and were not designed for the heavy traffic we impose upon them. The old building has several network devices that are aging and in need of repair or replacement. The network in the old building is vital to the functioning of the superintendent, secretary, Vocational Agriculture, chorus, Pre-Engineering and other special programs.

Five servers are now working on our network. They will soon be reduced to four. One has specifically been added to serve exclusively as the new school web server. This is an exciting time in which we are moving much more functionality to online and web based applications. This web server will meet these needs in addition to separating web services from file and print sharing issues, and giving a location for the web design class to use and help with the school web page. We have been able to manage and implement several additional steps using our OS X based file server. This is especially true in terms of getting a handle on student and teacher paper use.

Ohio SchoolNet has provided us with much needed support both financially and technically. The financial support has rapidly dwindled and as with all state monies we are looking at increasing costs and dependence upon technology with less and less monetary support. None-the-less the requirements and paperwork for those funds that are available do not decrease. We are still receiving funds for Professional Development and Ohio SchoolNet is providing assistance with Technology Planning that must be accomplished to meet federal requirements to receive E-rate funding.

Goals:

As we look towards the future we can see several trends developing . More and more of a teacher and administrators ‘s workload will require online access. This means functioning, relatively up to date laptops or desktop workstations. Web based applications and portals will be more and more the norm. Teachers, students and parents will be able to communicate and access grades, announcements, calendars, upcoming events, alumni information, software tutorials, card catalogs and more all through the schools web portal.  DASL is the first step in that direction. The technology department is committed to providing the highest quality service and tools at the lowest price. Therefore the move to more and more open source applications (free) has been a plus. Much of what we accomplish is done with open source software. It will be important for us, as a district, to develop a replacement plan and look for more stable funding avenues.

We can break down our vision into goals for the near future and goals for the long term. These are a few of the items presently on the table.

Short Term Goals:

Set up a replacement schedule for student and teacher laptops. Laptops that are in regular use (Office applications and the Internet) should be four years old or less.

Implement Progressbook which will be an online gradebook, lesson plan and assessment tool that integrates with DASL, student information software. This will also give students and parents a password protected means of keeping track of their children’s progress. Progressbook will keep parents informed as to what is going on in their child’s classroom.

Centralize the installation, control and management of desktop machines for easier configuration and rebuilding. (Using Ghost, Netinstall, and Remote Desktop)

Switch from MS Internet Explorer to Firefox. Also Open Source software that reduces the vulnerability of machines to viruses and spyware. Open Source is FREE.

Completely rework the school district’s web site to make full use of Open Source applications such as Apache, PHP and MySQL relational database. This will allow the web site to become dynamically generated. The site will then be maintained by more individuals and be updated on a daily basis instead of once or twice a year. The web site is the window to the world for our school district and needs to be made more functional and be kept more up to date. There are many great things happening at MCNC and we can use the web page to highlight and inform the public.

Use the SchoolNet Technology Planning Tool to reopen and update the school district technology plan. The TPT is an online tool that helps school district meet the requirements of Ohio SchoolNet and especially the requirements of the federal E-Rate program.

Replacement schedule for Elementary classroom  machines. These are five to seven years old.

Long Term Goals:

Develop a replacement schedule for computer labs.

Develop more curricular choices in the computer sciences including web design, video production and simple programming and relational data base design.

Determine the path needed for replacement or removal if IVDL equipment when it becomes obsolete(severely limited) in the 2006-2007 school year.

Replace Microsoft Office with OpenOffice.Org   This is completely compatible with all word, spreadsheet and presentation applications from MS and will be a free application for district users.

Project Leads the Way requires that we update software each year and that amounts to over 3 thousand per year.

Replace wireless access points that are designed to work on the room level with building wide access points. Remove building dead spots and increase security.