While students continue to adapt to new technology for work, play, and communication, their schools are also starting to rely more on all kinds of new tools that are getting teachers to teach better, helping students to learn more, providing support to school administrators, and generally bringing technology to both public and private academic institutions in innovative ways. Let’s take a look at the modern evolving school.

At East Providence High School, in Rhode Island, there are over 2000 students meaning that on any given day there could be dozens of kids out sick and absent. Not too long ago, that meant that two school administration staff members would have to fill out forms for each absent child and start calling each parent to confirm the absence.

Copies of that form would need to be filed in the school office, with another copy going back to the teacher via an office inbox. The long, manual process could sometimes take more than half a day to complete. If the child was truant or otherwise missing, it might take until mid-afternoon for the school to realize something was wrong.

But today, thanks to a sophisticated automatic attendance program, information on absent kids is immediately logged in from the classroom straight into a system that places an automatic phone call to the child’s home. The result of that call then generates email for both the teacher and school office, thus completing the process in minutes and saving hours of valuable administration staff time, not to mention the number of trees saved by using this paperless system.

Another system, also used at East Providence and many other schools across the country, is a grading system that helps students and parents stay on top of the learning process itself. The system posts grades online along with homework assignments and other specific classroom information.

“It really improves the communication between teacher, student, parent, and even guidance counselor,” says Kevin Monagle, a teacher at East Providence High. “We’re so lucky to have a school administration that embraces this new technology. It benefits everyone, particularly the students.”

A recent Los Angeles Times article details other programs being used at schools around the country that not only track grades and classroom progress, but also tardiness and even what kids are eating for lunch that day.

While schools are clearly accelerating their use of software specifically designed for the academic world, many teachers are taking it upon themselves to utilize technology within the classroom, so long as it meets the criteria and approvals of their school administration.

Kevin, the high school teacher at East Providence, who specializes in mathematics, says that he uses a variety of high tech tools in his classroom. “The SmartBoard is just amazing,” says Kevin. “It’s basically an interactive white board, but what’s written on it can be saved, stored, viewed online, and it really takes all the guesswork out of what was discussed that day in class.”

Other tools that Kevin uses during the course of a normal day include graphic calculators, Microsoft Excel® spreadsheets, and posting homework assignments on an online bulletin board. “I also do a weekly calendar, so that students – and parents – know what assignments are coming up.”

As a math teacher, Kevin admits that traditional tools will never be obsolete. “There really is no replacement for the old pencil and paper,” he says. “But what the new methods allow us to do is increase the quality of communication, providing a better overall education for the kids.”

Teachers, in general, are aware of the social networking that is prevalent on sites like Facebook and MySpace. Some teachers might have their own social networking pages, but clearly some schools don’t allow it because it could raise issues that might come back to haunt the teachers at some point. The best advice from security professionals is to stick with widely visible collaborative communication tools like classroom blogs, bulletin boards, and wikis, that don’t provide private student or teacher information, and are used exclusively for classroom related communications.

Of course use of new technologies can’t automatically solve problems that are already there. For example, cell phone usage within the classroom is still prohibited in a majority of schools, mainly to curb texting, Internet access, or cheating on tests. There’s also video and photography from cell phones that can cause class disruption and also brings up privacy issues if certain students or teachers do not want to find their faces showing up anywhere on the Internet.

The school systems also are stringent in maintaining strong Internet firewalls to prevent students from accessing inappropriate sites from school computers. “Interestingly,” says teacher Kevin, “sometimes even our own firewall could work against us. A couple of weeks ago, some of the teachers wanted the kids to view recordings of the nomination speeches of our Presidential candidates. But the school firewall wouldn’t allow access to YouTube or other sites that had it available.”

Also, check out these articles for more information:
Children and homework
Kids doing research on the Internet
Online Privacy Tutorial for Parents & Teachers

You know I love to hear from you. Please write to me at marian@norton.com.