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The goal of the technology program is to create an educational environment where technology becomes "transparent." This means that our focus is not on technology as an end in and of itself. It is, instead, a means to many creative and expressive ends. The foundation of the technology curriculum rests on three powerful toolsets---productivity, reasoning, and communication---which are used to explore and expand concepts generated in the homeroom. Beginning in kindergarten, students use multimedia projects as a springboard to learn the basic functions of the computer and operating system. Throughout their careers at the Elementary School, students build on these technology skills in both breadth and depth.
Examples of the technology curriculum:
KINDERGARTEN: Children learn how to identify and operate computer hardware and save and retrieve files while creating multimedia "books." These books allow them to tell a story about themselves and their family heritage by manipulating shapes and sounds with the computer.
FIRST GRADE: Students learn more about the operating system and further enhance their multimedia authoring skills. LOGO programming is introduced with an emphasis on critical thinking and pattern identification. Students use these new tools to create repeating designs for Pueblo-style pottery and other Native American crafts explored in their homeroom curriculum.
SECOND GRADE: In addition to continuing the development of their multimedia and programming skills, students are introduced to browsing the World Wide Web and performing simple searches. Each student creates a multimedia report, supported by and linked to web resources, which provides information about one of the "people who make a difference" discussed in the classroom. Special attention is paid to basic concepts of intellectual ownership and personal responsibility, both in terms of the subject of each student's project and his or her own choices when using information sources on the web. Children also learn to save and retrieve their work from the school’s local network.
THIRD GRADE: Word processing skills are taught in conjunction with more advanced Internet searching skills. Students are given a supervised e-mail account by which they communicate with third graders in South Africa as part of the social studies curriculum. Children create illustrated reports about the lives and local climates of their e-mail pen pals.
FOURTH GRADE: Students learn to perform basic troubleshooting tasks in order to correct minor problems with hardware and software used at Crossroads. They also learn to use spreadsheets to organize and manipulate information gathered from their observations and research about California history. Further expanding their skills with productivity tools, they practice simple desktop publishing to produce reports based on their statistical findings. Finally, in a brief introduction to HTML programming, they post these projects to a class website.
FIFTH GRADE: Students learn to create and maintain their own web pages, on which they display portfolios of their computer lab work. They further develop Internet-based work by transferring files, using telnet, and participating in private Crossroads-only chat rooms. These skills are used in conjunction with network-based simulation software to experience major events in American history. Students create web pages describing and analyzing their experiences, which are included in their online portfolios. Students are also introduced to database creation and usage and to intermediate troubleshooting procedures.
