For whatever day… Drummer Column, Gibbs, 739 words

Present and future states

My last column was lost in the emails during a millennium change, after a leap year, following the start of Daylight Savings Time. That threw my whole biological clock and bibliographic paradigm into a fireman's carry. Hard telling what day this will run. I mistook Tuesday for Thursday and thought Wednesday was Tuesday, and here I am.

I have some interesting statistics to share. I shall call this column the present and future states of technology at Benicia High.

Yes, it's another column about technology. I know the term Different Drummer means different topics from different angles. My proofreading wife will say, "Oh, Gawd, another technology column. You're about as different as sawdust."

I write what I know, I write where I live, and right now I'm right in the middle of writing the Benicia High Digital Grant. It is a roadmap for spending a half a million dollars of state money over three years on technology, and it's on my mind, so here we are.

A portion of the grant says to involve the community -- parents, merchants, community leaders -- in the formulation of the grant. We have done that with the help of the Benicia Technology Support members. However, we have the unique situation here in Benicia of going a step further by having the grant writer also being the local columnist. I can share the working document in progress and you can offer me feedback. It will be a true communal document.

Next week I will go into a cave and begin typing. I hope to emerge at the end of the week with a recognizable draft. I would like to share the digital plan with you over the next few weeks as it evolves, and perhaps we can tweak it together.

Some history: In January we conducted teacher and student technology surveys to set a baseline for grant-phase improvement. We asked all the teachers 20 questions. We asked 70 questions to 500 students, roughly one third of our student body. We did grand totals, then we divided students into grade and gender to look for marked differences. Here is a summary.

Only 40-percent of students consider themselves proficient with technology; 75% like using computers, yet only 44% enjoy classes more when technology is used, yet 62% said they would rather build a web page than write an essay; 98% of students have used a computer at least once; 45% use computers daily. Half the boys have a personal email address, while 75-percent of girls do.

O.K. That and 63 other questions established our baseline. Here is the overall goal: Students will become proficient and comfortable with computer technology and able to approach it with confidence in their future places of work and/or colleges.

Here's our three-year objective. We will improve technical proficiency by 75-percent. Today our proficiency rating is 40/60. We want that number to be 70/30 by 2003. (Keep in mind, beyond the scope of this grant, out four and five plus years, we hope for 90/10 or better, of course.)

Our annual benchmarks are to increase 25-percent.

Our plan is to focus on freshmen by creating a technology orientation program in the fall. We may use Greek Mythology, a required freshman unit, as the content that students would learn as we worked our way through various software applications. This initial exposure would be followed up with a new class called Introduction to Computers that focuses on Word, Excel, and PowerPoint -- roughly 85-percent of freshmen will take this class.

Freshmen make up roughly 25-percent of our student body. If our orientation program works like a charm without a hitch, and continues for three years at least, and we keep training sophomores, juniors, and seniors through individual-teacher projects, we will have our benchmarks and our goal.

Speaking of teachers, they showed tremendous enthusiasm and willingness to learn in their survey. They didn't score as high in ability as the students: 67-percent of students said they felt comfortable doing error troubleshooting; only 8% of teachers claimed such.

We have goals, objectives, and benchmarks for teachers as well. More later.

That's a general summary. Concerned Benicians are invited to join our online discussion at www.ragingbull.com. Just type in BHSDHS as the symbol and you're there. You can read the complete student and teacher survey results. Come on. Join in the fun. Share your two cents. Where should technology take us, or vice versa, in the near future?