Floral Park-Bellerose School District technology questionnaire

These are the replies from some districts to the Newsday questionnaire regarding the use of new technologies in their classrooms.

Some of the answers are elaborate, and have not been edited or reduced. Some districts did not answer the questions directly.

The Floral Park-Bellerose district reported the following:

1. Please list any major technological innovations introduced in the classroom in the past three years. Please give the name and list the use for each item.

SMARTBoards are used in the classrooms and some special area classes. The SMARTBoards are used to teach lessons interactively. For example in mathematics the use of interactive calculators, virtual geoboards, tangrams, coin toss for probability and classroom textbooks are used. In social studies interactive maps, charts and graphs, creating web quests with video streaming are used with the SMARTBoard. SMART Tables allow students to touch and manipulate lessons on top of an interactive table. In math students can work both independently and together to solve problems with or without visual objects.

2. Please tell us of any major innovations you are planning to introduce within the next year.

The district has SMART Document cameras. A SMART Document Camera transforms the classroom into a spontaneous and interactive learning environment. The SMART Document Camera uses video camera to display clear and detailed images of written material or any physical object in science and social studies. We will be getting iPads for some of the students that have very special needs, particularly in the speech and language areas, to improve articulation.

3. Are teachers or students using cell phones in the district for instructional purposes? If so, please advise

At this time we are not using cell phones for instructional purposes.