Stellar School District

W310 Stellar School District Simulation

Overview

This simulation has several purposes: (1) to give you hands-on practice handling the “tools of the trade” under realistic conditions; (2) to give you practice in making presentations in front of a group (educators must be prepared to teach, inform, persuade, etc...); (3) to increase your familiarity with using PowerPoint to develop effective presentations; (4) to engage you in instructional planning - deciding what pedagogical approaches to take; (5) to help you define and explore where you would like to teach and target your resumes; (6) to develop an understanding of web design issues; (7) to give you experience developing/maintaining school websites.

A significant portion of this course will focus on activites based on a simulated school district located in Stellar, Indiana. The Stellar
School District has undergone a major school restructuring effort. The notion of a "bureaucratic hierarchy" has been replaced with site-based management. Each school has the autonomy to make decisions on how their school will function, how monies will be allocated, and what type of curriculum will be taught. The Stellar School District is committed to enriching the curriculum with technology, therefore, they place a high degree of emphasis on staff development and training. Each school will be designing and presenting various presentations and multimedia projects to support their technology committment.

Creating a School Identity

You will be forming the schools which make up the Stellar School District. Think about the different types of schools you could design (alternative, magnet, traditional, school of the arts, elementary, urban, etc...) After listing the various school designs we generate as a class, you will select the school where you would like to be placed. When you assign yourself to a school, you will be required to work with your fellow educators throughout the semester.

Meet with the faculty of your school to identify the following:

Name of school

Grade Levels

School size, class size

Socioeconomic status (demographic culture)

Location (large city, midsize central city, urban fringe central city, urban fringe midsize city, large town, small town, rural)

Mission statement

Belief statement

Mascot

School slogan

School logo

School Colors

Faculty List (include names, email, and teaching area for each faculty member)

When your school has completed each of these items, prepare a PowerPoint presentation to introduce your school to the rest of the Stellar School District. Include each of the above mentioned components in your presentation. When designing your electronic presentation be mindful of how you use color, font, text size, and graphics.

Creating a School Website

Each school will be required to design and implement a school website that will include the following:

All the school identity components (e.g. school name, mission, belief, mascot, etc.)

A faculty page for each faculty member to be designed by each faculty member. (Note: This webpage will be used during your student teaching placement to introduce yourself to faculty, students, and parents. See Jill Fabiano's http://php.ucs.indiana.edu/~jfabiano/binford/ webpage as an example)

Before designing your school website, you will be required to browse through 4-5 school websites from schools in Indiana or around the nation. As you look through these websites, generate a list of the advantages and limitations of each website. Use this information to guide the web design process for your school. For a good start on finding school websites in Indiana visit the Indiana Department of Education website.

Inservice Workshops

As a school, you will select a topic from the Stellar School District Inservice Workshop Titles list and prepare a 35 minute interactive workshop incorporating PowerPoint and hands-on activities. Your school will be required to conduct research on the topic to help you decide which elements of your topic you want to include in your presentation.

Go to Inservice Workshop Specifications

SWAT (Students With Abilities in Technology) Showcase

go to SWAT rubric

Your school has done a "stellar" job of implementing technology as a tool to support the curriculum. Although you have provided outstanding inservice training for your school, there are still teachers who come to you with technology troubleshooting questions. Select any one of the SWAT scenarios and prepare a brief, succinct 10 minute presentation addressing how you would solve these troubleshooting problems. If you cannot find a scenario that interests you then you may prepare a presentation teaching the Stellar School District about a new software application program, a new CD-ROM, an interesting website (see calendar 5406 or 5408 for potential URLs), new hardware devices or peripherals. Please be sure to confirm your idea with your W310 instructor.

1. "My PowerPoint presentation is too large for my disk. What do I do?"
2. "Which is better, HyperStudio or PowerPoint?"
3. "How come I can only fit one digital picture on my diskette? How can I fit more than one digital picture on my diskette?"
4. "I read in a technology magazine that there is a way to have a conference with someone far away on your computer and see them on your computer screen. What do you need to make this happen? How do I do it?"
5. "My friend sent me this picture over email. I want to see it, but I don't know how. What do I do?"
6. "I'd like to explore some new interactive websites for (select a content area of your choice). Is there anything good on the Internet that I can use with my class?"
7. "What do I do when I have become the technology go-to person? I just don't have enough time!"
8. "I want to get the school logo kind of see through on the background of my document, how do I do it?"
9. "Every time I try to find something on the web I come up with a million things, how do I search more effectively?"
10. "I want to do a whole-class presentation on the computer. What equipment do I need? And how do I do it?"
11. "Whenever I use the web I can’t see what I want to because I don’t have the right plug-ins. Where do I find the Acrobat and the Real Video plug-ins and how do I load them on my computer?"
12. " I have some really important documents on this disk and it says it is not formatted, what do I do? I don't want to erase it."

**You may work with a partner on the SWAT Showcase, however, each person must present equally.

Attend a Professional Development Conference

The Stellar School District requires that each faculty member attend a professional development conference during the school year. As part of your professional development you will be required to attend either the HECC (Hoosier Educational Computing Coordinator) conference on Nov. 5 or the ICE (Indiana Computer Educators) conference held in January. You will be required to submit a follow-up presentation or assignment to share what you learned from the conference.

Page prepared by Wendy A.Tamborrino
Last updated: 1/17/00
Contact: wtamborr@indiana.edu
URL: http://inkido.indiana.edu/w310fall99/stellar.html
Indiana University, School of Education