{"id":2136,"date":"2013-12-19T14:16:46","date_gmt":"2013-12-19T14:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/?p=2136"},"modified":"2013-12-19T14:16:46","modified_gmt":"2013-12-19T14:16:46","slug":"state-technology-fieldston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/2013\/12\/state-technology-fieldston\/","title":{"rendered":"The State of Technology at Fieldston"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>
A map of Fieldston’s Server network. Photo by David Fishman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Apps for your iPhone (some designed by Fieldston students), a redesigned school website, new faculty websites, and a recently hired Director of Technology; Fieldston is going head first into the 21st century and there\u2019s nothing you can do to stop it. In the promotion and sweep of technology, something unprecedented is going on, and members of the Fieldston community have held critical responses and cautious attitudes towards the new technology. Some are concerned that new gadgets and websites do not necessarily mean better teaching or learning. Others are upset at being asked to cut down their budgets, while the school \u201ctosses money\u201d at tech. How can we resolve the conflict between a humanistic education, and the inevitable integration of technology in the classroom?<\/p>\n

At the helm of Fieldston\u2019s technological identity is Director of Technology Jorge Vega. At its core, Vega\u2019s job is to further the mission of ECFS and \u201chelp to execute the school\u2019s Strategic Plan,\u201d which looks to make Fieldston a \u201c21st-century progressive classroom.\u201d Helping Mr. Vega are technical support specialists \u201cwhose primary responsibility is end-user support\u201d along with \u201cdevice preparation \/ deployment,\u201d as well as academic technology integrators who, like ambassadors, \u201cwork with faculty and assist them in the development of curricular projects and goals.\u201d Part of determining what Fieldston will look like in the 21st Century is figuring out what kinds of products, services, and operating systems should be used throughout the school.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, this is a much more complex task than one might immediately assume. \u201cThere are so many different programs being used,\u201d Mr. Vega tells me, it\u2019s hard to track down and list each and every one of them. In our elementary schools, iPads have been used for the past few years, pre-loaded with a suite of apps that academic technology integrators work next to teachers to implement.<\/p>\n

\"Director<\/a>
Director of Technology Jorge Vega. Photo by Jacob Cader<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As for new initiatives and pilot programs running this year, Mr. Vega tells me there are two biggies: the faculty\u2019s transition to Gmail, and student migration away from fieldston.org to ecfs.org. Additionally, the department is testing out 1:1 programs with Chromebooks in the Middle School, MacBooks at Ethical Culture, and iPads at the Lower School. This \u201cone device assigned to one student\u201d experiment is gaining traction and Vega tells me that \u201ca clear student device plan [for the high-school] will emerge this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Sophomore corridor, there is an ostensibly innocuous small room you\u2019ve probably walked by one hundred times. What you might not have known is that this room houses a supercomputer, which runs the school\u2019s technology in a virtual environment. This allows for the department to manage the school\u2019s network environment and police the Cisco-powered wireless system that blankets our campuses.<\/p>\n

What does this mean for you? Be careful what stuff you\u2019re looking at on your personal and school devices. An unnamed source informed me that a few years ago, one of his\/her iPods was barred from the network due to inappropriate behavior. While Mr. Vega assures me that \u201cno one is sitting all day reading [your] emails,\u201d the department is indeed capable of monitoring all school owned apps, such as Gmail, Drive, and Google Calendar.<\/p>\n

The school has also released a mobile application that is meant \u201cto work alongside our new website\u201d (for more on the new ECFS.org website, see our coverage here<\/a>). The app, developed by Silverpoint (now FinalSite), condenses commonly used functions from the website and \u201cputs them in your pocket.\u201d While this is certainly a step in the right direction, the app in its current state is missing a few features that are most essential to student life.<\/p>\n

For example, there is no school-wide schedule available, or any way to access the school directory \u2014 as it is currently only available with a proper parent login. Mr. Vega tells me that one of his favorite features is the ability to take pictures \u201cand immediately forward them to the school\u2019s Communication Office right from the app.\u201d Unfortunately, this is another login-only addition, so most students (and parents) won\u2019t be able to use it. But fret not — in our typical Fieldston-style, there is a second app out there: the ECF Assistant.<\/p>\n

100% student developed, and 100% optimized for iOS 7, Freshman Daniel Kessler\u2019s ECF Assistant aims \u201cto provide a way for the Fieldston community, students, teachers, and parents, to access the information they need on the device they use everyday.\u201d The app looks to provide \u201cquick access to student schedules, calendars, athletic scores, faculty sites\u201d and even a mobile version of the Fieldston News. It would be almost impossible for you not to have seen the app on posters displayed around Fieldston\u2019s hallways and missed Kessler announced his app (which has already received almost 1,300 downloads) to a standing ovation at a recent assembly.<\/p>\n

\"One<\/a>
One of Fieldston’s massive server towers. Photo by David Fishman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Assistant (which Kessler tells me loads particularly slowly because information is not yet hosted on the school\u2019s web servers) provides the same basic functionality as Fieldston\u2019s official app, except it presents the information in a much more Apple-esq manner. There are four sections in the app: About ECF, Teachers, Students, and Parents. About ECF provides general info, teacher directories, and directions to the school. The Teachers tab gives faculty a way to enter attendance (though this feature is not natively embedded into the app), check athletics, and access the schedule. At the moment, Kessler\u2019s app is not ideal for general use, but with a bit of tweaking and speed-ups, we could be left wondering why the school ever bothered to waste its money on an outside contractor in the first place.<\/p>\n

I recently attended a PTA technology meeting between parents, Jorge Vega (the school\u2019s \u201cDirector of Technology\u201d) and our principal, Laura Danforth. The chief topic? Faculty websites. Parents wanted to know \u201cwhy every single teacher does not have a page for their class.\u201d Danforth\u2019s response: \u201cI hope to get there, we\u2019re just not there yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

A number of teachers have expressed their reservations about websites. \u201cAre we mandating them?\u201d Mr. Montera ponders aloud. \u201cI hope not. Are we doing it because it\u2019s trendy? Are we doing it because it\u2019s the latest toy? Are we doing it for publicity reasons? I\u2019m not yet there. I respect my colleagues who have wonderful websites. I trust their judgement and I hope they respect my reasons for not having a website.\u201d For this teacher, websites act as a barrier between the personal relationships he creates with his students — in the end, to change his mind, \u201csomeone is going to have to convince [him] that what they\u2019re doing is more than bells and whistles.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Paterson, a history teacher, says that websites just \u201cdon\u2019t work.\u201d She believes that students \u201crespond better to material that\u2019s given out and dealt with in the classroom.\u201d Mr. Behringer, in the English department, also feels that websites don\u2019t \u201creally seem to add much to the class.\u201d He has tried them in the past and has found that they are \u201cclunky and not intuitive to set up\u201d while taking \u201ca tremendous amount of [sic] time to learn and build.\u201d Another teacher said: \u201cFor me, technology is irrelevant, and websites are superfluous… I want to instill in students the love of language and of reading… Technology separates people from the text.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Third<\/a>
A Fieldston server closet. Photo by Daivd Fishman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dr. Church, notably on the other side of the spectrum, believes in using technology at almost every turn. In addition to running one of the most advanced websites in the school, Dr. Church video records his classes, accepts homework and labs through Dropbox (a file transfer service), and even goes as far as to supply his AT Biology students with iPads. \u201cBut,\u201d Dr. Church says, \u201cin [my] classroom there\u2019s actually fairly little technology being used to take notes.\u201d He is an advocate for taking notes by hand, and, as of now, tablet support of hand-written notes is little to none.<\/p>\n

Many teachers, like Dr. Church, feel that the adoption of technology in the classroom is beneficial to students. For instance, Mr. Chu, a Math teacher, feels that websites \u201caid in communication\u201d and provide \u201ca nice repository of information.\u201d Mr. Slaughter, Diversity Coordinator and teacher, uses his website \u201cas an online forum for kids to have conversations outside of the classroom.\u201d Even Mr. Reyes, who \u201cfor many years did not use a website,\u201d has \u201cbegun to recognize that there are certain things that having a website allows [his] students to do,\u201d like checking \u201cassignments when they\u2019re sick, or [if] they lose their notebook, or [if] they copied notes down wrong.\u201d Mr. Wearn, a Physics teacher who does not have a website himself, uses technology in \u201can activity where the kids run on a track and they measure velocity and acceleration using an iPad.\u201d<\/p>\n

The future of technology at Fieldston is in good hands and part of an ongoing lively debate. Jorge Vega is ambitious, willing \u2014 and given our school\u2019s immense financial resources (approximately $1.7 million or 3% of the 2012-2013 budget) \u2014 able.\u00a0 Vega leads a department Jay Heath, Associate Director of Technology for Academic Programs, tells me lives by the maxim \u201cnever use technology for technology\u2019s sake.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the coming years, our school will need to expand its mission to both offline and online. The teachers and administrators who are still denying that technology plays a growing role in the classroom will need to adapt. With Danforth and Vega at the helm, there is no stopping the technology revolution. Chromebooks, iPads, Google Glass; who knows what\u2019s next in the world of consumer technology? But, for this school, the future is as bright as the screens on Church\u2019s iPads, as integrated as Kessler\u2019s app, and as vast as the massive \u201ccloud\u201d it is headed towards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apps for your iPhone (some designed by Fieldston students), a redesigned school website, new faculty websites, and a recently hired Director of Technology; Fieldston is going head first into the 21st century and there\u2019s nothing you can do to stop it. In the promotion and sweep of technology, something unprecedented is going on, and members of the Fieldston community have held critical responses and cautious attitudes towards the new technology. Some are concerned that new<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":2139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"coauthors":[45],"class_list":["post-2136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-slider"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Tech-Cover.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/53"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2136"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2148,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2136\/revisions\/2148"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2136"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}