Three steps to technology immersion

From the classroom to the security office, technology has arrived at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM) in Durham, North Carolina. The use of any one of the technologies may not be unique to American high schools. But the degree to which technology is being employed at NCSSM, the way it has been introduced and the way its use is reinforced can provide guidance for other schools seeking to integrate new technologies. As the nation's first public, residential high school for students with special aptitude in math and science, the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics is intended to serve as an educational showcase. The school was founded in 1980 by the State of North Carolina and is guided by an independent board of trustees. From the start the school has sought to employ the latest technologies in the classroom, and their use has now spread through administrative functions as well. * In the Beginning The use of computer technology at NCSSM began in earnest in 1986 when IBM donated 60 PCs to the school, adding to the 20 that the company had donated in 1981. Most of these computers were put in clusters around the campus for use by students. Others were installed in math classrooms and a few faculty offices. IBM also offered the school a grant to pay teachers to work over the summer, learning how to use the computers in the classroom. is very, very important, says Jim Bostick, director of academic and administrative computing at NCSSM. can't just give people computers and expect them to know how to use them well. You must give teachers time to work on the computers. This is almost never done. Over the next five years, the school followed the familiar trend in which some faculty and students became adept at some technologies. Math teachers used computers in class for rapid analysis of large amounts of data and graphing calculators to visually demonstrate the results. NCSSM's math faculty developed a pre-calculus textbook (published by Jansen Publications in 1991) that emphasized solving real-world problems using computers and graphing calculators. Finding no software available on the subject, 1986 NCSSM graduate David Shackleford wrote four programs to accompany the text--one on data analysis, a function grapher, a matrix calculator and an illustration piece for geometrics probability. The text and software are now being used by a number of schools around the country. Science teachers put computer technology to work in a number of innovative ways. They linked computers with devices, such as the sonic ranger and photogates, to allow more rapid and detailed studies of phenomena such as motion. In the social sciences, teachers used computers connected to videodiscs to offer students a wide range of visual imagery to accompany lectures on history, language and art. In the meantime, faculty and administrators with computers in their offices made use of word processing, e-mail and the Internet. As time went by, those teachers who had been using the technologies developed a wealth of knowledge that they were eager to share with other faculty--many of whom had little access to, or knowledge of how to use, the school's computers. And though computers were being employed in every academic discipline, new technologies were constantly being introduced that no one on the staff had yet had an opportunity to try. * Three-Stage Plan In 1990, Joan Barber, student life director and coordinator of staff development, surveyed the department heads to find out what type of staff development activities they wanted for the coming year. The response was emphatic--more emphasis on technology. So Barber formed a Technology Committee, whose goals were to expose all faculty and staff to new technologies and help them to integrate those technologies into their work. To accomplish these goals, the committee came up with a three-stage plan designed to appeal to the least, as well as the most, technologically skilled persons at the school. …