What are 21st Century Schools?
21st Century Schools provide a project-based curriculum for life focused on engaging students in addressing real-world problems, issues important to humanity, and questions that matter. The 21st century requires generation of knowledge, not just delivery of information, and schools will need to create a culture of inquiry in order to develop life-long learners.
What new skills are required for the 21st Century?
The knowledge and skills that students should master to become successful in the global economy are outlined through the Partnership for 21st Century skills. Click here to read more.
Why is there a need for laptops in the classroom?
One cannot imagine a world of work where executives, engineers, and medical professionals all wait at their desks for a once-a-week opportunity to use a computer lab at the end of the hall. The days of students waiting for their turn with technology tools must likewise end. The tools for learning must be available where students work, not in a special room at the end of the hall. In classrooms with laptops, all students are engaged, and teachers can leverage resources, individualize instruction, and create opportunities to develop skills needed lifelong learning. Examples of this can be seen in our Classrooms for the Future classes at Radnor High School as well as at Radnor Middle School where teachers use the laptops from the closets to design highly engaging lessons.
What is a Smartboard?
The SMART Board is one model of interactive whiteboard. The interactive whiteboard connects to a teacher computer and a mounted LCD projector to project the image from the teacher computer onto a whiteboard that responds to touch. This resource greatly facilitates interactive learning in the classroom. Teachers and students can write and erase notes, use the touch-sensitive screen to control computer applications and save information for review.
What are the benefits of using a Smartboard for instruction?
Spend a few minutes in a classroom with a Smartboard and observe an environment of highly engaged students eager to interact with the electronic board. Elementary sstudents need hands-on access to the technology every day to keep them engaged and involved in their learning. Young students benefit greatly by being able to come up and touch the SMART Board. The tactile response helps students make a learning connection.
In the middle school, math teachers use the electronic white boards to show the steps in a process of solving an algebra problem, by creating a new slide for each part of the equation, and then saving each slide to create a slide show. These slides can then be saved to the teachers web site for further review. Pie charts, graphs, linear equations and geometric shapes can be manipulated to facilitate understanding of complex concepts through visualization.
At all levels, teachers can capture and write notes on websites to save for future review. English teachers at the high school use Google docs to share documents online. They are able to show a document that was created by a group of students who have collaborated online in a shared space, and then use the color pens to add comments and notes that will be saved for discussion and review at a later date.
21st Century Schools provide a project-based curriculum for life focused on engaging students in addressing real-world problems, issues important to humanity, and questions that matter. The 21st century requires generation of knowledge, not just delivery of information, and schools will need to create a culture of inquiry in order to develop life-long learners.
What new skills are required for the 21st Century?
The knowledge and skills that students should master to become successful in the global economy are outlined through the Partnership for 21st Century skills. Click here to read more.
Why is there a need for laptops in the classroom?One cannot imagine a world of work where executives, engineers, and medical professionals all wait at their desks for a once-a-week opportunity to use a computer lab at the end of the hall. The days of students waiting for their turn with technology tools must likewise end. The tools for learning must be available where students work, not in a special room at the end of the hall. In classrooms with laptops, all students are engaged, and teachers can leverage resources, individualize instruction, and create opportunities to develop skills needed lifelong learning. Examples of this can be seen in our Classrooms for the Future classes at Radnor High School as well as at Radnor Middle School where teachers use the laptops from the closets to design highly engaging lessons.
What is a Smartboard?
The SMART Board is one model of interactive whiteboard. The interactive whiteboard connects to a teacher computer and a mounted LCD projector to project the image from the teacher computer onto a whiteboard that responds to touch. This resource greatly facilitates interactive learning in the classroom. Teachers and students can write and erase notes, use the touch-sensitive screen to control computer applications and save information for review.
What are the benefits of using a Smartboard for instruction?
Spend a few minutes in a classroom with a Smartboard and observe an environment of highly engaged students eager to interact with the electronic board. Elementary sstudents need hands-on access to the technology every day to keep them engaged and involved in their learning. Young students benefit greatly by being able to come up and touch the SMART Board. The tactile response helps students make a learning connection.
In the middle school, math teachers use the electronic white boards to show the steps in a process of solving an algebra problem, by creating a new slide for each part of the equation, and then saving each slide to create a slide show. These slides can then be saved to the teachers web site for further review. Pie charts, graphs, linear equations and geometric shapes can be manipulated to facilitate understanding of complex concepts through visualization.
At all levels, teachers can capture and write notes on websites to save for future review. English teachers at the high school use Google docs to share documents online. They are able to show a document that was created by a group of students who have collaborated online in a shared space, and then use the color pens to add comments and notes that will be saved for discussion and review at a later date.
