Avenue for Community Involvement

The Tech World flyer published by the Technology Committee of St. Mary School provides St. Mary Stakeholders with information about implementation of our five year Technology Plan.

The Technology Committee Members are a group of gifted people who give generously of their time and talent to the faculty and staff of St. Mary School.

Our Parent Community through its generosity has brought life to our Tech Plan and is seeing to it that their children are prepared with life skills for the work place.

Communicating with the Community---- Do you want to know what projects your child is doing in school? Did you misplace your school calendar? Is the school closed because of weather? Do you want your children doing their research from Kid Friendly Web Sites? Would you like to know about the different clubs and organizations at St. Mary School? Check it out!-------www.stmaryschool.net.

Engaged Learning Model

The Teachers and Technology Coordinator continue to develop projects that integrate technology into the curriculum. Online research is second nature to St. Mary students as it can be done in the lab, library, and classrooms.

E-Pals engage the students and teachers to explore the cultures of other countries while doing collaborative projects with schools from around the world.

Global Communication continues at St. Mary's, The Wilderness Classroom Organization will continues to work with our students of St. Mary School. Our guides, Dave, and Eric utilize technology, connecting with our students while bringing educational adventures into the classroom. The 2008-2009 school year will find our 4th -8th grade students moving on to the last stage of the Trans-Amazon Expedition. They are choosing tp paddle in October to highlight the seasonal changes that the Amazon Rain Forest annually experiences. Water levels will be as much as 35' lower, exposing beaches and animals that they haven't seen yet. The students will follow the explorers from October 6 - November 21, 2008. This should be a great learning opportunity for our students.http://www.wildernessclassroom.com.

Cable in The Classroom assists the students and teachers to engage in a variety of rich study guides, lesson plans, and activities, for example: www.historychannel.com/classroom offers " Ideas From Teachers" tips for using the programs in the classroom, and links to other related sites that deal with historical events and landmarks. Jr. High, The Library/Resource Center, and The Technology Center, have the opportunity to use this resource.

United Streaming has been added to our daily researching of topics. This has taken teaching to the next level. St. Mary School have been members of Discovery Education for over a year. http://www.unitedstreaming.com

The classrooms have at 3 to 5 computer work stations, all of which are online. TV presentation systems and VCR's have been added to each classroom from 2nd to 8th grade. Mobile carts outfitted with presentations systems are available to teachers in Preschool through 1st grade. Teachers continue to use these presentation systems for their PowerPoint Chapter Reviews, student note taking, teacher presentations, Internet Quests, and Global Explorations.

  On going Staff Development

The 2008 / 2009 school year again finds the Administration and Technology Committee supporting the faculty to continue to work toward innovative use of technology in the classroom. Teachers have a "Technology Core Skill Checklist" to help them "set" their technology goals for the school year. After school training is offered by the technology coordinator to help the faculty work through the "Technology Core Skill Checklist" to "achieve" their technology goals. The teachers worked with the iWorks software in the fall of '07 and into '08. For the 2008-2009 school year their training will be geared to learning the in and outs about our new iMac machines and new software that was purchased for the computer lab, it will be a busy year learning many new things.

Upcoming conferences that some of the staff will take part in are: The Illinois Technology Conference for Educators 2008-09 sponsored by the Illinois Computing Educators ( ICE ) in February "Connecting to the World of Tomorrow."http://www.il-tce.org. Some of the teachers will be taking summer classes through the Office of Catholic Schools August Opportunities.