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 * WEST BROOK'S "MISSING LINK"**
 * Dr. Kay Abernathy, Professor-Lamar University
 * Kristi Fuselier, Director of Student Activities-West Brook High School
 * Amanda Chadney,PE Coach-West Brook High School
 * William Falker,PE Coach-West Brook High School
 * Meredith Hamilton, AP US History teacher- West Brook High School
 * Janice Kattawar, Technology Liaison-West Brook High School
 * Stephan Malick, Journalism teacher-West Brook High School
 * Vicki McCown, AP Senior English teacher-West Brook High School
 * Billie Tucker, Geometry teacher-West Brook High School

PURPOSE: The STaR Chart shows West Brook’s greatest weakness to be Teaching and Learning. Not all teachers are receptive to new technology. But as more and more curriculum incorporates technology teachers are going to have adjust their way of teaching. We no longer can grab the same old textbooks and ancillaries to teach the “21st Century Learner”. Just as peer tutoring can help students grasp concepts more readily, I FIRMLY believe that the same peer tutoring can help teachers grasp the concepts more easily. We'll use this Wiki space to make suggestions for integration of technology into the classroom. Alll members of the committee may "Edit this page," and add and adk questions, or give suggestions. Select the "Creating your own Wiki" on the left of my home page to learn a few new wiki skills.

1. Give an example of one way technology is used in your classroom. If you do not have a "classroom" please discuss uses of technology you have observed.

RESPONSE FROM jkattawar: From a campus technology liaison point of view, my response to this request involves observation in teachers' s classrooms. At the end of last school year, the campus purchased a mini-notebook charging cart on wheels with 25 netbooks for wireless connectivity. The main application at this time is for our ACADEC class to access DEMIDEC online for course curriculum access. We are in the process of working out the kinks, but success is close. Plans include using this cart in other classrooms to facilitate project based research. Fortunately, our building principal has embraced technology and allocated funds to purchase interactive white boards, data projectors, and laptops. For the first time in three years, all 110 data projectors have been checked out. Math, science, and social studies classes have benefited tremendously from the interactive white boards. Productive, amazing applications using the interactive boards have been created and implemented. All English classrooms will soon have interactive white boards installed. The online courseware, PLATO was implemented last year providing credit for failed courses and interactive course enhancements for tutorials.

2. Can you think of a way a colleague could incorporate a specific item into his/her classroom that would help your students grasp a concept you have been trying to teach.

RESPONSE FROM jkattawar: Again responding as an observer, the interactive boards provide students one of the best settings for grasping concepts. Within each department, teacher collaboration among those who have interactive boards has provided a solid learning base. Inclusion of Internet sites with maps, videos, and interactive lessons along with creative interactive content games has helped the learning curve. In a perfect setting with unlimited funding, all teachers should have the opportunity to use an interactive board.

=**Incorporating New Technology-Creating a student newspaper online**= Teaching new technology is always a challenge especially when certain practices become routine and successful. One of the goals I set for our newspaper staff was the development of an online presence. Although there has been an online classroom and training website for our staffers, we did not have a "true" news-oriented website.

In Fall 2009, our staff began development to design the architecture of our site; what kind of content did we want to present and how did we want it to appear. In addition, we had to consider how labor intensive maintenance would be and how frequently it would need to be done.

We explored various news site programs (Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress) and it was an exhaustive process, but very interesting and challenging for my staff and myself. In addition, we had to coordinate campus and district resources to figure out the logistics of access, hosting and capacity.

After about six months, we chose an third-party provider to host the site and to provide a software platform with technical support and training. We work with []

Our site was completed and posted near the end of the Spring 2010 semester and is currently a work in progress.