St. John’s Parish School

925 Chenery Street • San Francisco, CA 94131 • 415-584-8383 • www.stjohnseagles.com

September 10, 2002

 

Innovative Technology & Student Technology Aide Representatives

 

20% of the Nation’s Schools are using wireless technology. St. John’s is proud to among these technology-leading schools because with the innovation of mobility comes the integration of instruction and the inclusion of students with special needs. In the former, students remain in their classrooms and technology is brought to their desktop while the teacher continues to instruct. In the ladder, students can be in any resource setting and technology is brought to their learning space while the educator assists with the students’ needs.

 

Mobile networks, like this, bring the technology to the environment where learning is taking place. And, at St. John’s, all of this is done without a computer teacher.

 

How is this possible? Innovation and creative problem solving. Solutions come when needs are clearly identified and when all within the educational community are aware of the needs. Many times the remedy can be found among the group and even among the students if we are willing to model what shared learning and teaching looks like.

 

Thus, the creation of Student Technology Aide Representatives, (STARs). 

 

Teachers don’t need to be computer experts or technology gurus. My experience has convinced me that teachers must become curriculum experts and use technology only if it is going to compliment their instruction. Jr. High students, on the other hand, have demonstrated time and time again that they know more or just as much about computers as many teachers do.  So, when you partner a teacher with a STAR you have the educator teaching the curriculum and you have the aides assisting the students with the technology.

 

For instance: when our 4th grade teacher is presenting a lesson on the California Missions, the aides are assisting the students in setting up the laptops, managing the Internet browser, making sure the printers were working, and troubleshooting networking issues. The teacher remains focused on instruction and the aides are assisting in that process. Our STARs are truly partners with us in the educational process.

 

What enables our STARs to  work so effectively is the type of network management we established at St. John’s. Networks, are only as good as their usefulness of design. In creating a student-based network we took advantage of the latest in innovative software and server technology. We introduced software that allows our teachers and administrators to track student use, control and view student computers and communicate remotely with other users. This model of network management ensures ease of functioning and even allows our STARs to oversee the network’s management.

For example, all students, when logging onto a laptop do so with a unique ID and password. Once logged on students have access to the network server which holds their files and set of predetermined preferences. This configuration allows our students to use any computer because the files and the preferences follow the user. This type of network management also defines the applications a student can use and eliminates the concern over losing documents or tampering with system files. Under this network management model printers are assigned and even paper quotas can be made to insure that no student abuses the use of a printer or the supplies necessary to make them operate.

 

St. John’s is proud to be among 20% of the nation’s schools leading the way with innovative technology. Being innovative with wireless mobile computing, Student Tech Aide Representatives and workgroup network management means that St. John’s can be, is, and will continue to be innovative with technology in order to insure the ease of classroom use for our teachers and our students.