Today's Catholic Teacher magazine has chosen St. Casimir Regional School as one of  the 2002 recipients of the Catholic Schools for Tomorrow Award for Innovations in Technology. The award annually honors twelve Catholic elementary and secondary schools which have embraced technology and applied it to their curricula and administrations in unique and innovative ways. 

St. Casimir was nominated for this award by Darlene Cardillo, director of educational technology for the Albany diocese.  In her application, she praised the school for its staff development efforts.  "Since Saint Casimir does not have a computer teacher or a computer coordinator, it has become each individual teacher's responsibility to learn how to use the computer and how to incorporate it into his/her curriculum. The teachers at Saint Casimir have actively embraced this challenge. "
 
Teachers Go Online To Learn About Technology 
Through the Schenectady-led collaboration of the Title III Technology Literacy Challenge Fund grant, there have been  many online opportunities for teachers who wish to  improve their technology skills.

Tech Mentor, Tracy Standhart has offered a 6-week course entitled "Treasures of the Internet" and one called "Finding the Best Educational Resources in the Web." Two courses, "EXCEL" and "PowerPoint for the 
School & Classroom" are sponsored by the Online Learning Forum at RPI.   Finally, Meeting Assessment & Standards with Technology (MAST), run by Eileen O'Connor of Interactive Learning Solutions, offers online courses on MSWord, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, FrontPage and advanced Excel.

So far this year, about thirty teachers have enrolled in these courses.
 
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Karen Vessa, from Cohoes Catholic, at her computer