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Program Overview
 BEYOND
Technology Education lives its Mission of “inspiring educators in
the use of technology to improve teaching and learning in the
classroom”. We do this by helping teachers, students,
administrators, parents and all stake holders of a school to
understand and value the integration of technology into the entire
school culture. This process is not a simple hardware fix or
software solution. This process is done in several steps that
evaluate teachers, students, curriculum and the school’s
infrastructure. Once this has begun, a full school Integration plan
can be developed and implemented. The results of a BEYOND
Technology Education Integration Plan are:
·
Return on investment –
teachers teaching better and students learning better through
engaging lesson plans that incorporate higher order thinking skills
and positively impact student achievement.
·
Lifelong learning –
teachers and students developing a problem solving ability to keep
pace with the changes in technology that they will undoubtedly
encounter throughout their educational and professional careers.
·
Computer fluency –
the
ability to understand the computer as a “tool”, how to use it and when to use it,
taught within the school’s academic curriculum framework.
·
School-wide technology integration –
technology becomes seamless and is no longer an optional add-on but
a truly integrated part of the culture or DNA of the school. This
is accomplished by bringing the ISTE Standards based high tech
learning in the computer lab into the classroom curriculum with both
lab teachers and classroom teachers orchestrating just-in-time
learning plans.
·
Promote The 3 "C's" of Professional Development –
research proves that a trained
staff will use and innovate
 teaching
methods at a greater rate after developing "confidence,
competence and content". The 3 "C's" are critical to
getting teachers inspired and actively learning ways in which
technology can improve student achievement. Confidence
begins with our Professional Development course,
BEYOND Technology Basics for Teachers.
Competence is built up as teachers attend the weekly computer
class with their students and co-teach using the BTE Student
Curriculum for Students.
Content is developed in partnership with our Educational
Professionals and classroom teachers as they
integrate their standards based
lessons with engaging and exciting technology to create powerful
technology enriched lesson plans. Basically by not bringing
something entirely new and foreign to teachers but by weaving
technology projects into the lesson plans teachers already are
comfortable with is our approach.
 Our
philosophies promote inspired teachers, motivated students and
excited parents. We carefully develop a sustainable, three-year
plan for complete school-wide technology integration that utilizes
academically and fiscally sound methods. This happens by simply
applying researched and proven plans that have been updated and
modified for each unique school setting. The three steps include:
1.
Training teachers
2.
Training students
3.
Integrating technology into the
classroom curriculum
Basically we want to
move the entire school BEYOND what is believed to be achievable
today.
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