Alexis: Technology....for better or for worse is here to stay...giving us instant access to answers and beyond what is in our textbooks. It is entertaining and interactive and we seem to be born knowing how to use it.
Jami: We like using technology, plain and simple. It allows us to go beyond what we thought was ever possible.
Alexis: Personalized instruction sounds great on paper, but the reality of large classrooms and limited resources is what students are often faced with.
Jamie: The Loess Hills elementary school in Sioux City has been specialized to teach coding to students at a very young age. According to Principal John Beeck the idea was to incorporate programming into all of the core subjects and then move ahead with training. Technology has its own language and the younger a language is learned the better.
The problem...not everyone attends the Loess Hills Elementary school.
Alexis: Anyone can open enroll, but it isn’t always easy to get to the specialty schools if you live miles away. Kathy Bottaro is the district technology director and she supports utilizing more technology in all areas.
Kathy Bottaro: So...the specialty schools we have..the computer programming school at Loess Hills? (Yes) They will look at teaching programming within the curriculum. So using coding when they are learning to read and learning different math principles and those kinds of things.
Alexis: I feel like it would be hard for students to get to schools that are across the city...who can’t have their parents pick them up..
Kathy Bottaro: That is another thing that we would look at and I think that if a parent were to call our district office and say that, “I would really like my child to go to Hunt...” but they live in Morningside or the Westside and that kind of
Thing, we would look at what kind of accomodations could be made.
Jamie: Knowing more about the advantages of a tech integrated classroom increases the chance of success with it.
Alexis: For now, many would agree that if it is here to stay, we should find the best way to use it.
