Volume 4 Issue 1

Thanks to the New York State Title II-D Enhancing Education Through Technology Competitive Grant program,  the students at Bishop Maginn High School, Notre Dame-Bishop School Gibbons, Our Lady of Victory School,  Sacred Heart School, St. Mary's-St. Alphonsus School, St. Clement's, Regional School, and Saratoga Central Catholic High School will experience a technology-enhanced curriculum beginning this fall.

Some schools will be purchasing one cart of laptops with wireless access to the Internet. The first year, laptops will be used in all curricular areas by the students  at Notre Dame-Bishop Gibbons, Our Lady of Victory, Sacred Heart, St. Mary's-St. Alphonsus,  St. Clement's, and Bishop Maginn.  The students at Saratoga Catholic will be receiving Palm handheld computers. Both technology programs will be expanded in subsequent years of the grant.

Teachers will be trained to design technology-integrated lessons.  Using laptops or handhelds in the classroom will give students access to technology resources as the technology relates to their learning -- when they need it instead of waiting until the students are scheduled into a computer lab.

The purpose of the grant is to improve student academic achievement in relation to New York State learning standards through the use of technology in high need New York State school districts.  The public school districts of Albany, Schenectady, Troy, and Corinth will serve as Local Educational Authorities (LEA) of the grant and will coordinate the funds and staff development activities throughout the grant period.

The grant award period will span three years beginning March 2004 and ending March 2007.  A quarter of the funding allotment must support professional development activities.

This past summer, due to the closing of two nearby schools, St. John the Evangelist in Schenectady has acquired s lot of new technological resources.

They will now be able to convert their former Spanish classroom  into a media center. It will include sixteen new Dell computers with high speed

Internet access, new printers, a visual presenter, an interactive whiteboard, a LCD multimedia projector and a videoconferencing system.

This addition of a computer lab will supplement the activities already done on the networked computers in the classrooms.