Vision+of+ICT+at+ISB

** Vision ** It's early morning in her kitchen Mrs. Jones is checking the ISB website on her wireless portable as her three children get ready for school. In a few minutes she is able to: · check the volunteer schedule for her third grader; · email grandma about a video podcast to download and watch about the third grader’s recent class performance; · read an e-mail reminder from the middle school office about an upcoming event; · double-check the time that her high school son's concert begins that evening. The third grader's day begins with a morning meeting, and then moves into a reading workshop and a writing workshop. During these activities: · the class watches digital media created by student council members with the help of their sponsor and the ICT teacher about the latest elementary fund-raising effort; · the student uses a document camera to show the class how she has revised a piece of her writing for content and edited it for grammar; · the class generates questions that they will e-mail to the author of a book they just shared and checks the internet for a contact address before sending them out; · students work on a photo essay project designed by the grade three team in collaboration with the school librarian; with the help of the ICT teacher, some students are still downloading or scanning photos they took on a recent field trip with their class' digital cameras; · the teacher meets with a small group of students around an interactive whiteboard to experiment with a number of different formatting and layout ideas before the children go back to the laptops to polish their work; · the teacher reminds the children that they will be meeting with another grade three class in a few days to share their essays and get feedback on how to improve it before posting it to the class webpage. Down the hall, middle school lunch is about 95 minutes away, and the seventh grade middle school student is: · logging onto the Internet via her WiFi capable mobile device before going to science class; · letting her friends on her social networking site know to go read her blog about prejudices she published earlier in her humanities class.
 * Information and Communications Technology **
 * Information and Communications technology supports the ISB Mission and is embedded in a challenging curriculum that is focused on understanding-based, student-centered learning to educate and inspire students. ICT enhances instruction, collaboration, communications and the operations of the school. **

Meanwhile, the student’s science teacher is finalizing the instructions during a VoIP call with a seventh grade teacher in Shanghai for the upcoming interactive and collaborative lesson where the class will: · gather local pollution data with wireless probes feeding into a laptop; · exchange the data with the school in Shanghai via a wiki; · write a comparative analysis of pollution levels in Beijing and Shanghai in small teams using online document resources; · create interactive graphs and tables that they will finish the next class and publish on the class’s website. The other seventh grade science teachers are following the same process with their classes, but are exchanging data with different schools in other parts of China. At the far west end of the building on the third floor, it’s last period and: · the high school student is engaged in a heated discussion about the politics of U.S.-China relations where his peers and he are trying to reach consensus for an ongoing online debate with peers in a partner history class at an American high school; · it’s noisy and ideas are being batted around verbally and via mobile devices to shoot responses back and forth as they firm up their counterarguments and questions; · the teacher is online with a colleague to inquire about websites with specific trade data to provide students with further support for their arguments; at the same time, another email is opened to communicate with her colleague in America about assessment data for the online debate, she also searches educational blog sites in another window; · one student yells out, “I got it,” and exclaims she found the perfect political commentary in the library database and will post it on the class wiki site; · class ends; the conversation continues as students briskly pack up their belongings, leaving the room, but still messaging into handheld devices, exchanging the last bit of feedback before posting the document to the online debate forum, and making contacts with friends to connect after school; That afternoon the high school student agrees to meet his friends in Starbucks. At the table, one laptop has several applications loaded: email, a music player, blog sites, a couple of chat clients, a wiki, a social networking site, a search engine, and a web site about //The Great Gatsby//. Two friends are looking at another laptop, and weighing the merits of a passage listed in an online journal to which the school subscribes. The basic goal of education has not changed— to prepare students for life-long learning and success in a changing society. ISB students are engaged in a challenging curriculum that is focused on understanding-based, student-centered learning. When appropriate, digital information technologies are a key part of that engagement. Students and teachers are comfortable using technology. In fact, technology tools are viewed as a resource no different from books, pencils or paints, and they are used freely when it makes sense to do so.