First a vision, then implementation and integration........

Our mission at Lyman A. Budlong School is to provide ALL children a superior multicultural engaged learning environment, using technology as a tool to enhance learning via ubiquitous access to technology.  We envision that our students will be life-long, self-initiated learners, able to evaluate, analyze, think critically, and solve problems. 

We intend to provide the telecommunications and educational online resources (e.g. email, online discussions, web environments, etc.) our students need to participate in collaborative problem-solving activities where they develop solutions and products for audiences both inside and outside the classroom.  Our students will be the innovators and thinkers of the future.  

Our principal, Alvin Solomon, has been THE catalyst and resolute advocate for over 15 years to ensure our students have access to technology and that our students, teachers and staff are technology and information literate.  Mr. Solomon works closely with our Local School Counsel and our PTA to develop and maintain the use of technology at Budlong

Our Accomplishments: Infrastructure

Any visitor to Budlong can visibly witness our commitment to technology by 
simply walking the hallways:

• Almost every teacher has her/his own computer in the classroom.

• Most classrooms have 2 -5 student computers in the classroom that provide access to the wealth of Internet resources.

• Three permanent educational technology labs, each with 30 – 36 computers, and fast Internet connection.

• One mobile lab of 22 laptops with wireless Internet connection.

• A variety of digital cameras, scanners and LCD projectors.  

• The Follette automated library system is being utilized in our library for checking out books.

• Most classrooms have a closed circuit TV which enables daily broadcasting of school announcements, live broadcasts from our principal and assemblies/performances as well as viewing educational video.

• The classroom closed circuit TV is also be used for projecting slide show presentations and Internet content for the whole class to see.

• Our web server allowes us to publish our educational website with resources and school news for parents, students and teachers as well as classroom homework, projects and classroom news.

• Our file server enables individual accounts for all staff and the intermediate and upper grade students.  This allowes flexibility if a computer is not working as the teacher or student can log on to a different computer to access to her/his valuable information.  We are also able to back-up everyone’s files and web pages so we can protect our valuable intellectual property.

Our Accomplishments: Personnel and Projects

To support our teachers, administrators and students, Budlong School has invested in two technology teachers and one network administrator. 

Our network administrator troubleshoots all equipment as well as works on special projects, such as setting up web casting from our website.

Our technology teachers work closely with the classroom teachers to develop lesson plans and projects which integrate technology into the curriculum to provide engaged learning and high order processing.   For instance, our primary grades technology teacher worked with the 3^rd grade teachers on a shapes project.  Students walked around the school and playground with digital cameras and took pictures of shapes.  Then they took the images and created books about their shapes.  Our upper grades technology teacher worked with the reading teacher to create a web book report project.  After reading their books, students wrote a synopsis of the book, created a quiz, identified their favorite quote and hand drew an illustration for the book.  Next they scanned in their illustrations and created web book reports using their quiz, illustration and favorite quote.

This year our primary grades technology teacher has brought the Dell TechKnow Program to Budlong.  TechKnow is an after school program where select students who do not have a home computer learn to fix computers and inst all software.  Upon completing the program, they get to keep the computer and are giving one year free Internet access.  This has been a very empowering program to boost the confidence of many students and to help close the digital gap for students who are not able to afford home computers.

In addition, Budlong is participating in the PCs for Homes Program.  This program enables parents to buy refurbished computers and printers at a very low cost.  This program is also geared at closing the digital gap.

This year Budlong School participated in Piloting the FastForward Program which is designed to help students develop auditory and reading skills in 50 minute sessions every day.  We are piloting this program for the CPS Area 2 office and we will give them feedback on the usefulness of this program

Once a year, our technology teachers sponsor a Technology Night which showcases students’ use of technology.  This year’s theme was “Family - We are different and We are alike.”  Sixth grade students presented i-Movies that they created about their family and some fifth grade students created slideshow presentations about their country of origin. 

In 2001, our primary grades were awarded the Technology Literacy Challenge Fund grant for a total of $90,000.  This grant provided extensive staff development to support teachers as they redesigned some of their lessons into engaged learning lessons.  This grant also provided for the purchase of various educational technologies (digital cameras, scanners, educational software etc.) which were used to promote students’ higher order thinking and critical thinking skills.   We hope to apply for similar grants in the future to further our use of technology.

Our technology teachers also coordinate and teach on-going professional development technology classes in the evenings.  We offer this training to all of the teachers from the surrounding schools who wish to learn both basic technology skills (email, Windows OS, MS Word, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint, Internet resources) as well as the Intel Teach to the Future class.  The Intel class has teachers incorporate the various applications (web page, word  processing, Internet resources, slideshow presentation, and brochures) to integrate engaged learning into their curriculum.

Page last updated March 2005