Westbury 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.
There are 3 unique programs that we are starting next month:
1. iGame4 2 Day Pilot-
A 2 day pilot program through Nassau BOCES of the iGame 4 phys ed program. It’s totally free and essentially iGame 4 takes over your Phys Ed schedule in the building for 2 days. They come in the afternoon before and set up everything ( and tear it all down when done) they bring a Phys Ed teacher along as well who runs the program with our teacher.
2. MyChinese 360
a. This is a program starting on February 7th at the Middle School. It is an live online interactive video course to teach Mandarin Chinese to a 2 classes of 15 6th grade students. The instructors are located in Beijing China and all are Graduates of Beijing University. It features lecture 2 days a week and 2 days of self-guided assignments. We are one of the first schools on Long Island to make use of this program.. We have set up a brand new state of the art Computer lab at the Middle School in room 304 and plan to do a ribbon cutting before the first class on Feb 7th. The classes run from 2:40 to 3:25 Monday through Thursday . Good opportunity for Press and TV – especially with cutbacks going on across the Island here’s a district moving forward in a big way
3. Smart Table for Pre K/K - We are piloting a Smart Table with the PreK, K school (Dryden) starting for 4 weeks on Feb 9th. It might make for a good article on early childhood computing
As for Technological innovations , Westbury is far ahead of most school districts in many ways. With a student population of slightly over 4000 students :
a. we have nearly 3000 computers in district , over one hundred handheld devices: ipods,ipads, tablet pc’s
b. Smart Board systems in every elementary and nearly all Secondary classrooms.
c. We have a gigabit WAN/LAN connecting all our buildings.
d. We have ubiquitous Wifi throughout the district
e. We have started utilizing ipads/ipods for AIS online courses.
f. We have elementary students participating in video conference/skyping with students in Italy, and Central America
g. We have an active Television Studio in the Middle school for Video production. We are working with MSG Varsity in the High School for Video production and we are starting a TV/Video studio in our Park avenue 1st/2nd grade school
h. We offer an advanced graphics design course in the High School that is taught by a former Disney animator
i. Westbury has a Magnet school program for Grades 9-10 that is hosted at the Cradle of Aviation and they study physics/math/robotics. We also field a team in the FIRST Robotics competition.
