Sheffield Intermediate School
(Carrollton/Farmers
Branch ISD)
Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District encompasses over 53 square miles and is located primarily in northwest Dallas County with a smaller portion in Denton County. The Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District provides instructional services to approximately 22,000 students who live in portions of Carrollton, Farmers Branch, Addison, Coppell, Dallas, and Irving. It is a school district that constantly pushes forward and aims for success. The original Technology Plan for the district was developed as a three year plan in 1997 and meant to be maintained and updated as a flexible work in progress, due to the ever changing needs and advances in the field. However, funds have become less available due to the increase revenue demands of the Robin Hood Plan, which requires districts with higher tax values to give some of their income to other less fortunate districts. This has put a strain on many aspects of the district and individual school budgets, especially technology. As a result, many of the advances that were to have been made by this time still hang in the balance. It is hoped that the bond that was passed just last year should allieviate some of the district’s problems and bring it back up to speed.
Sheffield Intermediate School is one of two intermediate schools in the district. It has a VERY diverse population (52% Anglo, 25% African American, 10% Hispanic, 8% Asian) with an almost equal balance of low and mid range socioeconomics. It serves third, fourth and fifth graders in the same building and has approximately 550 students on campus. The building is set up in the straight back formation of many C/FB schools. Its office is situated in front as you walk in and has a workstation for the nurse, both secretaries and both principals, as well as a district printer and fax machine. To the right beyond the new buzz in security doors is the music room and band hall (turned G3 lab). The hallways extend straight to the back of the building to classroom pods of four. The entire 4th grade is on the right with the cafetorium, while 3rd and 5th grades are on the opposite site. Each teacher has a PC workstation and a personal HP printer in their classroom with internet access and television hookup capabilities. The district is also slowly adding a stationary ceiling mounted computer to each class, although currently, Sheffield only has one in the G3 lab and two in 5th grade classrooms. The rest of the televisions are rollabouts on media carts. Teachers who have attended the district’s Technology Academy in the summer are given 6 computers of their own to use in the classroom as well as a laptop docking station in addition to the regular workstation. Again, budgetary issues have made these computers difficult to come by, even for the Academy graduates. Last year’s recipients didn’t get their computers until spring of the following school year.
The center of the school has the library (which also houses 6 PCs, the digital camera and all video and sound equipment), bathrooms and the old Macintosh LC lab and Lightspan lab. Each lab, both the G3 and the Mac lab, houses 25 computers. As no class in the building can be over 25 students, this allows a 1:1 ratio between students and computers. The G3 lab is only two years old and works smoothly, possessing one laser printer, two cameras and a flatbed scanner, but the LC lab has several computers in various states of working order, as the district is phasing them out and does not wish to repair them. Because of this, LCs are used primarily for final copies of student work and keyboard practice (the biggest focus of 3rd grade technology at present). No further software will be purchased for this lab.
The center of the LC lab also houses twenty old Apple IIE monitors, which act as screens for the Lightspan project, a Sega Genesis CD set of educational software used to build math and reading skills with the students. Unfortunately, the only lab with internet access is the G3 lab at this time, however, the few teachers fortunate enough to have the 6 classroom computers have a few extra computers to use in lieu of lab time. Regardless of internet accessibility, all the lab, classroom and workstation computers are part of the CFB network server, with the obvious exceptions of the Lightspan and Apple IIE systems.
Each school has its own Site Support personnel to assist in troubleshooting problems and a webmaster, but these people are chosen from the staff already on site. Every 4 or 5 schools in the district has an Instructional Technology Support (ITS) person that is specifically assigned to be the next step in the troubleshooting ladder as well as the resource for teachers wanting new ideas to use in teaching curriculum to the students using technology. Their offices are housed in our Technology/Administration Building.
Thus far, the district seems to take its intermediate schools with a grain of salt, under the premise that less grade levels equal less children and therefore, less need for support. This has proven true many a time in the past, as we are normally at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to receiving new innovations in the elementary school forum. At present, Sheffield has participated in both the Project Integrate program with Apple and has 6 teachers who have gone through the Technology Academy, but does not have the means to effectively display student and teacher work. Recently, the school was able to acquire a presentation system to screen computer work, but few teachers, if any, have learned to use it yet. The school’s biggest problem is even having enough time to develop a technology project because of limited access time. The school has approximately 50 student accessible internet ready computers, but in only 31 of those are in a lab or group setting that can be accessed by the entire student body. The rest are in individual classrooms that cannot be constantly disturbed by individual students needing to use them.
The most useful upgrade the school needs is to have more time for teacher learning on the computer systems. The district has yet to supply teachers with a classes that adequately prepares teachers for the multimedia used in the building, and when it does, only a few teachers can afford to go (i.s.—6 teachers only chosen for Project Integrate, 3 teachers chosen to learn Lightspan in halfday school sessions) I firmly believe that teachers as well as students can benefit from a problem solving method of learning in technology, wherein a person is allowed to investigate the system on their own with guidance from the instructor. This is the best method of allow each learner to move at his or her own pace without feeling rushed or held back by others. It also allows for education through social interaction. This is most closely akin to Lev Vygotsky and John Dewey’s work in inquiry based learning. Students regularly enter the lab faced with a problem, such as how to write a decent report using the technology available. Through accessing the data and collecting it it, the student is able to analyze what he or she wants to do or add to make the project complete. In the process, especially in a lab setting, the student learns from peers, instructors and from trial and error how best to display their work and internalizes the usage of the media available. Plus, people who are actively involved in their learning are more readily able to teach it to someone else, thereby reinforcing their own learning. For example, the child who’s found a way to insert pictures into his writing can easily show another child, who learns it, but also remembers it when the next child needs to know how.
The next upgrade the school could definitely use is to replace the LC lab with a PC lab. Many teachers still are forced to struggle for ANY computer time because the computers are used for everything from PAWS Party keyboarding to searching the internet for whales. More computers would increase instruction time to almost double. Instruction would focus on the creation of a project designed to show knowledge of academic content as well as display evidence of major technological components (use of slideshow, word processing, internet research, etc.) Classes would begin with a brief teacher introduction of new media, such as how to save pictures from the internet, while students spent their time working out ways to insert the picture into their project.
Finally, a dedicated technology person or better training for each building would ease the load on the teachers troubleshooting for the entire school, as well as teaching their classes and the technology to the school. At present, only two people have this job and cannot focus on it in anyway due to their own classroom loads. The situation could easily be remedied by adding a specific computer education teacher or by training ALL teachers to properly introduce technology in education to their students.
Bruce, C. & Levin, J. Educational Technology: Media for Inquiry, Communication, Construction, and Expression (http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/~chip/pubs/taxonomy/index.html)
Means, B. (1994). Introduction: Using technology to advance educational goals. In B. Mean (Eds.), Technology and education reform: The reality behind the promise (pp. 1-21). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.