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Top 10 Wired Colleges vs. St. Francis of Assisi School,
Astoria, NY |
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Villanova's famed finance lab gives students access to all the tools that a stock trader on Wall Street would use to manage an actual fund—thanks to a generous donor.
SFA
offers to seventh and eighth grade students the opportunity to invest in
the stock market. In the Stock Market Game teams are given $100,000 to
invest over a nine-week period via the NY Stock Exchange. The team with
the highest return is invited to a day at the market and receives prizes.
An electrical engineering and computer science major says “We really take our computing seriously here." Programming and innovation are keys here. Logo Programming was created at M. I.T. by a team led by Seymour Papert who wanted to give children the power to create and control computer programming. (http://www.papert.org/)
SFA
offers MicroWorlds Logo Programming to students beginning in grade 4.
Closely integrated with the geometric aspects of math, this language was
the basis for programming the original Lunar Landing Module. We have
materials available to create a variety of robots that can be programmed
to do a range of tasks. Our 5th graders
thoroughly enjoyed MicroWorlds, creating some fantastic programs that were
shared and enjoyed; our principal also dropped by for a few
demonstrations. An after school club group worked with our robotics
materials with a modicum of success!
High-speed, high-capacity, and widely available network; major upgrades to the school library and its information system afford the third spot to this school.
SFA
offers network connectivity throughout the building thanks to prudent
planning, educational technology grants, successful grant proposals and
the investment of time and in the interest of being no less than “at the
top”. Our library information system is a work in progress accessible by
students as well as by the faculty and librarian.
Several grants have provided us with a new server
providing a stronger infrastructure and greater storage capacity. Our
library continues to be brought online as new acquisitions are made.
Professors set up a web page for each class for the dissemination of assignments. Grades and forums are available.
SFA
hosts its own website. Teachers have the opportunity to post pertinent
information which can be altered as the need arises as well as to share
student work and expectations. Posting of grades, etc. is under
consideration, but will take time to implement.
Planning to host a gamefest. Yes computing is fun! SFA asks students to think creatively, as early as Kindergarten, through various grade-appropriate projects. K: People using a computer at work; Grade 1: The Term Worm introduces computer hardware; Grade 2: The Term Worm tells of various keys, terms and characters; Grade 4: The Innovative Mouse; Grade 8: PowerPoint Shows.
A university that has embraced technology taking risks and encouraging students to do the same, has numerous graduates who are now big players in the tech industry, having established companies such as AMD, Eudora, Netscape, PayPal, and YouTube. SFA’s classrooms are much like the ones these innovators populated. It is our dream to one day open an electronic news-gatherer and see familiar names of those we now call student who have become tech innovators! We continue to add new programs and improved opportunities for each student.
Some of the recent technology upgrades include enhanced classrooms with smart whiteboards, online storage and a small clicker device that students can use for attendance, test taking, and more.
SFA
has a smart whiteboard, network storage for each student’s work and you
have experienced “The Clicker” if you attended Br. Clifford’s conference
in October! We have one of these units on each floor and teachers have
cordless electronic chalkboards to make changes to information
“on-the-fly”.
This university boasts a new video-conferencing system. SFA is awaiting the outcome of a grant proposal that would offer in-house conferencing as an introduction. Through a second Best Buy te@ch Grant SFA now has two top of the line computers and webcams. We inaugurated this program by having the 4th grade class that is split for library/computer ed communicate with each other from the two sites. Students were excited about this opportunity and had fun sharing information - meeting the grant's main expectation!
Every academic course offered at Quinnipiac has an associated Blackboard shell (website component) available to its instructor and students. How much the program is used in any course depends on the faculty, with some majors using it more than others. . . .another way students can stay connected is via a PDA. SFA is right in step here! And, students in grades 6, 7, and 8 are learning to manage the AlphaSmart Dana Personal Digital Assistant. This program is currently discontinued for re-evaluation while greater emphasis is placed upon curricular integration.
Free storage space for each student, access to their many computers, and an eLearning platform are some of the reasons that this school comes in at #10. SFA has for each student a specific storage folder, network access throughout the building and in 2006-7 offered Learning.com lessons so that each student could learn about technology through individualized lessons completed at their own pace. This online program was received as a one year grant; we will evaluate this year whether or not it should be re-instituted in future years.
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