Technology in the NES





Over the past few years, technology has become more and more integrated throughout the Elementary School as we prepare our young students for life in the 21st Century. The move into the New Elementary School building will see this continue to be the case. We will strive to stay at the cutting edge and will no doubt soon be using forms of technology that have not yet even been thought of. Exciting times indeed!

So how will the technology program look at the NES? In days gone by, technology was taught as a separate subject by a specialist teacher in much the same way as music, art or PE. That is no longer the case at AISB where Information Technology is not seen as a separate subject, but as an integral part of the whole curriculum. In other words, all the teachers are now technology teachers and they use technology in their classrooms across all areas of the curriculum. To assist the teachers with integrating technology, there will be two IT coordinators at the NES whose role it will be to work closely with them at both the planning and implementation stages and ensure the effective use of the technology that is available at the school.



The students use technology at school in a whole range of ways. The internet is a great source of information and regularly used for research projects while students at higher elementary grade levels also have email accounts and personal blogs. As they progress through the Elementary School, an increasingly large amount of students’ work is done on the computer and either printed or published on their individual websites. Such published work could include podcasts, video clips, PowerPoint or Keynote presentations, brochures, posters, comic strips, eBooks etc. and this list gets longer each year as new technology becomes available.

Teachers and students also have access to scanners, digital cameras and video cameras. Some new and exciting additions to the classrooms in the NES will be interactive whiteboards, projectors and visualisers. Crucially, we also aim to improve student access to computers by increasing the number of laptops available as the focus moves further away from the computer labs and into the classrooms.

So, all in all, there are some exciting times ahead in the field of technology and at the NES we plan on being right at the forefront as one of the leaders in the use of technology in education.

Karl Gray
UE Technology Integration Specialist