Technology Curriculum

Technology is an important part of SASD's curriculum and a critical component of the school district environment.

The district Technology Plan focuses on the 7 major points found below:

1. Provide a K-12 program that will help all students become literate in the use of technology.
2. Use technology to assist and enhance the educational program.
3. Develop and implement an integrated district-wide technology program for administrative/staff personnel.
4. Implement an effective communication system within the district and beyond.
5. Expand the availability, use, and integration of technology into the K-12 curriculum through the district’s library media centers.
6. Establish a technology center/hub as a district and community information center.
7. Train all staff (in an ongoing and supportive manner) to enhance classroom instruction through the use of technology.

To read more about the SASD Technology Plan, read the SASD 3-year Technology Plan (2003-06) (PDF) and the 2006 Technology Plan Update (PDF).

Technology Implementation
Here in the Souderton Area School District, the technology team is empowering students to be creative and unique; utilizing technology as a tool for learning and sharing. Technology and curriculum has become a strong integral part of student learning.

Technology integration evolves around all the core content areas of learning, such as math, reading, writing, social studies, science; furthermore, integration carries over through the special areas of learning which consist of music, art, library-research, and physical education-health.

The elementary technology team provides support for classroom teachers on how to incorporate technology into their curriculum. The team also educates the students about the functionality of the computers, while demonstrating how technology enhances performance.

Teachers and students use technology as a tool to develop and increase performance by making teaching and learning more proficient, valuable, and available. It also means opening new avenues to learning. Technology allows us to “differentiate instruction” in addition to allowing teachers new and advanced ways for delivering instruction while giving a new dimension of learning for all students.

Internet2
In 2004, the district completed the connections and installed the necessary components to provide access to Internet2. Internet2 is a research and development consortium led by over 200 U.S. universities working in partnership with industry and government to develop and deploy advanced network applications and technologies, accelerating the creation of tomorrow’s Internet. Internet2 is recreating the partnership among academia, industry and government that fostered today’s Internet in its infancy. Internet2 is focused on advanced network applications that enable collaboration among people and provide interactive access to information and resources in ways not possible on today’s commercial Internet. Interactive distance learning, remote access to unique scientific instruments, real-time access to large databases, and streaming high-definition video are all possible with high-performance networks. New network capabilities such as Quality of Service, multicasting, and IPv6 are being aggressively tested and deployed in the networks used by Internet2 members.

The University of Pennsylvania is a university member of Internet2 and a stop on the high speed Abilene backbone that is the heart of Internet2. The university is also a sponsoring agency for Internet2. Through a partnership with the university and NetCarrier, the districts internet service provider, the Souderton Area School District is providing access to the resources available on Internet2.

Some of the applications and research that are available to students and teachers include: The nanoManipulator which is an interface to scanning probe microscopes allowing users to see, feel, and manipulate samples ranging in size from DNA to single atoms.

The Gemini Observatory, a multi-national project to build twin 8.1 meter astronomical telescopes in Hawaii and Chile, makes the skies in both the northern and southern hemispheres fully accessible to astronomers. High-speed networks like Internet2 allow these mountain top telescopes to be operated remotely, in real-time, by astronomers in sea-level control rooms.

Virtual Harlem is a virtual reality environment developed to supplement African American literature courses at Central Missouri State University. Students are able to step through a virtual portal to the 1925-1935 New York Harlem Renaissance to navigate the city streets, interact with key figures, and listen to the music popularized during the era.

The Information Digital Video Library project is an initiative that studies how multimedia digital libraries can be established and used. The informedia project has pioneered new approaches for automated video and audio indexing, navigation, visualization, search and retrieval, and embedded them in a system for use in education, information and entertainment environments. Informedia uniquely combines speech recognition, image understanding and natural language processing technology to automatically transcribe, segment and index linear video segments.