teacherlaptopprogram

=The Living Sky School Division Professional Laptop Program=

The Living Sky Laptop program is intended to meet several learning, professional development and curricular objectives.


 * A major focus of the program is to build teacher capacity to teach with technology and to enable them to develop strong classroom programs in[[image:HPIM0170.jpg align="right"]] which students are actively engaging with technology to meet curricular objectives.
 * Integrating laptop use within a committee structure establishes a meaningful purpose for the use of technology providing motivation through a need to learn.
 * As well, it allows for teachers to receive support from and to learn with their colleagues thus creating a confidence and comfortableness with the technology that will allow the transfer of skills and knowledge to the classroom setting.
 * Providing laptops to committee members facilitates the teaching of skills and new applications by enabling the committee leaders to teach and reinforce skills and new applications one-on-one or to a small group.
 * The provision of laptops to teachers is intended to encourage innovation, creativity and experimentation at the level at which each teacher is comfortable.

Four teacher committees were provided with laptops to facilitate their committee work and learning during the 2007 – 2008 school year. Each committee has developed specific objectives for the use of the laptops:

**Arts Education Teacher Leaders Committee **

 * 1) To facilitate communication between committee members through the use of the [|Arts Ed wiki] and a social network on [|Arts Ed 2.0] (ning)
 * 2) To collaborate on the creation of an exhibition of images/video from the Artist in the Classroom project. This may result in further documentation of additional projects.
 * 3) To use effective search strategies to find, use and share tools/information that support the Arts Education renewed curriculum.
 * 4) To commit to an Arts Ed and technology project using one of the tools available, such as but not limited to:
 * 5) Movie Maker
 * 6) Podcasting with Audacity
 * 7) Voice Threads
 * 8) Painting with the White Board
 * 9) Comic Life

**Early Childhood Literacy Committee **

 * 1) To facilitate communication between committee members through the use of a [|wiki].
 * 2) To collaborate on the creation of two documents using an online collaborative writing tool such as Google Docs
 * 3) Development Literacy Record (PreK- grade 2)
 * 4) A companion document which details assessment and instructional strategies for the components of reading
 * 5) To use effective search strategies to find, use and share information that support each of the reading components.

**Middle Years ELA Inquiry Learning – The Power of the Quest **

 * 1) To facilitate communication between committee members through the use of a wiki.
 * 2) To use the technology to delve into an understanding of inquiry learning, to develop expert search strategies and to organize the collection of resources
 * 3) To use a wide variety of online tools and desktop application to model inquiry learning. The tools that the teachers use to learn will be the tools that they use with the students.
 * 4) To use collaborative creation and communication tools to develop an inquiry-learning unit for each of the four grades.

In-School Instructional Technology Support Teacher Committee:

 * 1) To facilitate communication between committee members through the use of a [|wiki]
 * 2) Use a blog to share information with staff members and other committee members To attend three virtual meetings that experiment and explore new communication options such as:
 * 3) To develop and lead two professional development opportunities that reach all professional staff in the school over the course of the year. One PD session will deal with digital safety.
 * 4) To use the laptops as a learning and communication tool during the four face-to-face workshops that delve into:
 * 5) Web 2.0
 * 6) Digital Citizenship
 * 7) Information Literacy
 * 8) Professional Development