WINTER 2009

Stories of Excellence profile best technology teaching

In 2007, NAIS launched the Schools of the Future initiative to establish itself as the forum for conversations about schools of the future. In support of this goal, NAIS’s 21st Century Curriculum/Technology Task Force invited schools with outstanding examples of technology teaching and learning to submit case studies. As a result, 20 schools produced 20 case studies published in a booklet, Stories of Excellence: Case Studies of Exemplary Teaching and Learning with Technology.

The Stories of Excellence are intended to serve as role models to inspire other schools and teachers to create their own programs and join in the unfolding story of how schools must keep apace with the changes going on in society and in our students' lives.

According to editor Jenifer Fox, school consultant and task force member, "These stories should encourage independent school teachers and administrators to get online and begin to discover in earnest the plethora of creative, project-centered, collaborative curricular initiatives taking place all over the world. Once you do that, you will see that the stories in this report are not simply models; they represent imperatives for student success."

There's no question, Fox argues, that technology has become the new literacy for young people. Through it, they learn to collaborate in a global community. It is this global community, and the students' need to successfully participate in that community which underlies the premise of this report showcasing programs and the schools that implement them.

The independent schools that shared their technology stories have common key ingredients. Each of them has, as a part of its mission or guiding principles, the commitment to student-centered learning, diversity and inclusiveness, the development of creative thinkers, and a stated commitment to using technology to achieve their goals in preparing students for life beyond school.

The 21st Century Curriculum/Technology Task Force sees these stories as examples not only of what individual teachers should be doing in their classrooms, but as windows into the organizational and cultural adjustments needed in independent schools to support evolving curriculum. For Jenifer Fox, "The world will not wait for us, and the students we teach will not either. The time for these stories is now."

For more details on the Stories of Excellence, see p. 71. Also visit the NAIS website: www.nais.org.