From the moment I entered their main office, Lewis Elementary stood out from the hundreds of schools that I have visited in the past. Visitors sign in on a laptop computer connected to a label printer that immediately spits out an adhesive visitor's badge printed with the person's name, along with the date and time of arrival.
As I had arrived my customary ten minutes early, I affixed my badge and had time to watch a photo slide show on a flat screen monitor mounted high on the wall outside of the main office. (see photo at bottom, far right) It was apparent before I even met with Mr. Lauer that I had arrived at a school that values the use of technology in many aspects of the elementary environment.
I sat down with Mr. Lauer in his office under the soft glow of his MacBook Pro displaying the most recent school newsletter. After a quick upload and print setup of said newsletter, we got down to discussing the ways that technology is utilized in his school.
Starting on the administrative side, Lewis Elementary uses an electronic attendance system that can produce a student's entire attendance history at the touch of a button. Mr. Lauer also utilizes Twitter (what's Twitter?) to stay in communication with staff and parents. He also uses his website as a place to keep notes about how technology can be used by students (and teachers) to further their understanding of their world. The school has also set up a Google Group to disseminate information about school happenings, as well as links to the electronic versions of all the school newsletters (cool to see the same, freshly posted, newsletter online that I saw on his laptop a couple of hours ago). Teachers are also given time "on the clock" to do class notes so students and parents can see homework assignments, announcements about field trips, and information about general class activities. Teachers are also taking advantage of iphoto '09 which, most impressively, allows teachers to sort their digital photos, by student, using the built-in facial recognition capabilities.
Students are also well served by technology at Lewis Elementary. Second graders are learning to play the piano using MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) keyboards (see photo at bottom, center) connected to computers in Lewis' computer lab (see photo at bottom, left). Third graders visit the computer lab for forty minutes twice a week, while fourth and fifth graders visit for forty minutes four times a week. They learn computer basics such as keyboarding, but also experiment with the digital arts including: Digital photography, video production, even musical scoring using Garage Band.
Music teacher Tony Jamesbarry is integral to the implementation of technology at Lewis. Not only within the musical applications previously mentioned, but architecturally he has students using Google Earth to choose a plot of land using satellite imagery and then Google SketchUp to draw a virtual 3D building on that land. We visited the computer lab as Mr. Jamesbarry had a class working on keyboarding skills with an interactive whiteboard up and waiting for the next lesson. Mr. Lauer pulled out his iPhone and showed me an application that he and Mr. Jamesbarry had discovered that allowed his phone to be used as a touch screen to remotely control the cursor on the whiteboard, wirelessly, from where we stood in the doorway of the lab. I believe I actually said, "Wow!".
But what I found to be most impressive about Mr. Lauer and Lewis Elementary was that they did not fall into the all-too-common trap of focusing on technology to the detriment of other programs. They have an amazing outdoor education center and learning garden, an instrumental music and band program, as well as an extensive visual arts program.
Here is a school that can be held as an example of how elementary schools can implement technology intelligently and thoughtfully. Meriwether Lewis Elementary is a model for how to utilize technology not as novelty, but as a useful resource for teaching, learning, and communication.
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