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Science & Technology
Tech Dreams, A Vision for Future Schools
2009
Our Essential Questions:
What emerging technologies will affect K-12 schools in the next 20 years?
How will technology address the learning styles of students?
What is virtual learning and what part will it play in future schools?
What is digital access and how will technology be accessible to all students?
How will digital citizenship impact the use of technology in the K-12 school of the future?
What should be the vision statement for technology use in future K-12 schools?
Curriculum Standards
1. Creativity and Innovation
Students demonstrate creative thinking and construct knowledge and processes using technology.
2. Communication and Collaboration
Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others.
3. Research and Information Fluency
Students apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information.
4. Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making
Students use critical thinking skills to plan and conduct research, manage projects, solve problems, and make
informed decisions using appropriate digital tools and resources.
5. Digital Citizenship
Students understand human, cultural, and societal issues related to technology and practice legal and ethical
behavior.
6. Technology Operations and Concepts
Students demonstrate a sound understanding of technology concepts, systems, and operations.
Expected Outcomes
Through research of emerging technologies, students will apply their knowledge to generate new ideas, explore possible futuristic scenarios, and create a vision statement of the future of technology in K-12 schools.
They will develop:
1. collaboration skills through team work
2. creativity through expression of their ideas in a Web 2.0 environment
3. critical thinking skills by analyzing data and information collected
Required resources
Internet, Library, Spreadsheet software, Presentation software, Video editing software, digital video camera, scanner, and Photo editing software
This project will help our class, school, community, and world by providing explanations of emerging technologies to students, teachers, administrators, stakeholders and other interested parties. A vision statement for the use of technology in the K-12 environment will benefit all as we shift our paradigm of technology as a separate instructional tool to the transparent use of technology in all aspects of learning.
Team
LaurenHARRIS CO-CARVER MIDDLE SCH, GA, United States
SarahHARRIS CO-CARVER MIDDLE SCH, GA, United States
BradHARRIS CO-CARVER MIDDLE SCH, GA, United States
AshleyHARRIS CO-CARVER MIDDLE SCH, GA, United States
AlexisHARRIS CO-CARVER MIDDLE SCH, GA, United States
LandenHARRIS CO-CARVER MIDDLE SCH, GA, United States
Age Range
15 & under
Coaches
Katheryn HallHARRIS CO-CARVER MIDDLE SCH, GA, United States
Category
Science & Technology > Technology > The Future
Audience
All ages
Language
English
Team Collaboration
The strength of our team is evenly divided among six people. Our technology team has good writers, artists, and organized people. How does this make us different from other groups and what about our project has parts of our personal strengths in it?
Lauren is our basic editor and organizer but what would she be if she wasn’t also a very good artist and writer? As part of our team, she has shown her talent in art and that’s why she designed all of our banners and did the color schemes.
Alexis is a good writer and makes surveys for pages. She did a lot of research concerning future technology and schools. She has acted like our cheerleader many times to keep us motivated.
Ashley makes a good addition to our team because she interacts with Think Quest students and asks them their opinions. She is very opinionated and writes well.
Landon is very good with sources and citations. He has been valuable in finding information on digital readers and is always ready to share what he has researched.
Brad is very interested in future technology and how it might affect future children. He researches different pictures that match our writing and enjoys discovering new emerging technologies.
Sarah finds basic ideas of what the future will be like and all of us add details. She is good with defining our basic definition. She has been very interested in digital access in 3rd world countries and has offered excellent input from her research.
Many of our team members were involved in other extra-curricular activities that caused many road blocks for how we would do our even share on this project. Through team work, varied meetings, and cooperation, we all contributed to the project by writing what we thought and sharing the facts we found.
This project has affected how we use our free time at school and how much we see our friends. In the morning before school starts, we don’t get to socialize with our friends because we are working on our project. We have stayed after school many times and have gone to the computer lab during many of our lunch periods to continue our project work. As we worked on this project, we had a goal; a goal that we would win this competition by working hard and writing our best.
Team Diversity
Our team used our differences in order to provide a rich selection of opinions that peacefully coexisted and worked in harmony throughout the project. One of our members has no Internet access at her home so she worked on the project only at school. However, this provided another opinion to the team on why we need to make Internet more available to people that don’t have access. Two of our members had some challenges with writing but everyone helped to build their confidence. It helped us to realize that technology can assist students with varied needs and according to their learning styles.
Our team members also had political differences and therefore had different opinions on laws that government should enact towards schools and technology. Issues like Fair Use, Internet security within schools, and student use of personal devices are hot topics that must be addressed in the future. Some team members were liberal, and others were conservative, but we were able to leave the negativity of our differing opinions on the sidelines so that we could offer different points of views. We realize that these political differences are not just within our team but all over the world. We know that society will have to unite in their different viewpoints about the use of technology before that use can truly reach its potential in our schools.
