NSD Elevates The Student Learning Experience
National School District, located just South of San Diego, CA, is a K-6 district whose 10 elementary schools, serve over 6,000 students. The district’s vision of helping students become exceptionally prepared learners and compassionate world citizens led to an innovation initiative. The initiative provoked an overall evaluation of the district’s current classroom technologies and a refresh was recommended.
For 15 years, the teachers at NSD had put their lesson delivery systems, Promethean ActivBoard, to the test. But it was time to see something new. The district took the opportunity to evaluate a few different brands of interactive flat panels over an extended period of time. A committee of teachers, curriculum and technical staff were chosen to participate in the hands on review. After participant feedback was organized and analyzed, Promethean’s newest Element Series ActivPanel was chosen as the technology tool that would help the district elevate the learning experience for those 6000 students.
Advanced Classroom Technologies was honored to be a part of the evaluation and so happy to help the district empower their teachers with the latest in classroom innovation from Promethean. Over the Summer, the ACT team was able to meet so many wonderful district personnel while we delivered, unloaded, staged, unboxed, assembled, updated and finally installed the new panels in each classroom. But the integration could not be complete without professional development for the teaching staff. Afterall, what good is the most powerful interactive teaching tool if you don’t know how to use it.
We enlisted the help of the experts at Promethean and through coordinated efforts of ACT, NSD, and Promethean, the idea of the National School District Technology Summit came to fruition. The NSD Tech Summit would be a 2 day Element Series ActivPanel training session delivered by Promethean Education Consultants to the teaching staff and several NSD students of different grade levels. Getting the students involved made the technology summit an extra special event and was the brainchild of National School District Director of Literacies, Educational Technology and Innovation, Dr. Wendy O’Connor. The students would have the chance to experience the new technology before their teachers and become Element Series ActivPanel experts that other students (and teachers) could turn to for help with their new tools.
The first day was dedicated to those students who, with just a little bit of training, would become Junior Promethean Educational Consultants. Promethean Educational Consultant, Julie Porter, split her team of Promethean Pirates up to divide and conquer. Twelve to fifteen students were assigned to each instructor. Each group spent half an hour training on certain functions of the interactive flat panel and then switched to another EC team member. In just a few short hours, the students were able to master the basic functions of the hardware and navigate most of the IFP’s robust software features while troubleshooting a multitude of challenges set by their instructors.
Dr. O’Conner kicked off Day 2 with introductions of the Promethean and ACT teams. Next, she gave the floor to Account Executive Eric Pagano, who delivered a motivating keynote speech to participating teachers in attendance. Eric reminded the teachers that the new ActivPanels had been evaluated, tested, and ultimately chosen to make their lessons more dynamic, their students more engaged, and their jobs a whole lot easier.
Classroom training on the panel’s functionality, the Operating System, ActivInspire, Lesson Integration, and other new Element Series features kept the teachers busy for the rest of the day. Then came the time for the teachers to take their new tools for a test drive. The feedback we received from participants was fantastic and we could not have been more pleased with how the event unfolded. Advanced Classroom Technologies’ goal has always been to help districts empower their teachers with the tools they need to succeed. The Promethean team helped ACT take that empowerment to a whole new level for the teachers at National School District. Their expertise, dedication, and love of learning, made the summit a tremendous success.