Tech.Philosophy

=Philosophy of Technology Use at SFHS =

We, the community of teachers and learners at SFHS, believe:

Technology encourages fundamentally different forms of interaction between students, teachers, and communities. It contributes to an environment in which teaching and learning move from teacher-centered to learner-centered education, from individual tasks to collaborative work, and from passive learning to engaged learning. Technology provides students the means to explore, discover, and construct their own knowledge.
 * Technology creates new teaching and learning opportunities.**

Distance learning and other technologies provide a means for a more equitable and varied education for all students. Learners in every community need consistent access to a basic set of technological tools.
 * Technology provides the means for equitable learning opportunities.**

Technology empowers community members to learn from each other. Technology enlarges the scope of the resources available to learners, including the ability to draw on the strengths of others though distributed learning power. Technology removes the limitation of time and space when collaborating with others. Technology provides a catalyst for interdisciplinary studies and team teaching.
 * Technology provides opportunities for collaboration.**

We recognize that mere access to information is no guarantee that learning with take place. We do know that development of methods to gather information though technology and to organize, synthesize and assimilate that information with the help of the tools of technology must be an important goal in planning the education of our students.
 * Accessing, processing, and applying information are critical life skills.**

Staff and students discover and exchange information and knowledge with the larger community, which is comprised of their classroom, school buildings, local community, state, nation, and world.
 * Technology provides enhanced communication opportunities.**

Technology changes rapidly. The entire institution must keep abreast of technological changes that directly effect the learning environment and continue to provide access to relevant tools. Each year as new technologies create faster computers with greater memory, new software anticipates those greater technologies. This creates a cycle in the technological world of hardware increasing to meet the demands of software, and software then utilizing the improved resources of new hardware. Because of this, it is imperative that we execute a plan of action to evaluate and update the hardware and software in this institution on a yearly basis. Outdated hardware and software hinders our technology vision.
 * Implementing technology is an ongoing process.**

People move though a continuum of technology use. Recognizing this and providing a means for people to move to even high levels of technology use must be a priority of the entire institution.
 * People will always have varied levels of technological expertise.**

We also believe:
 * Students need to be able to use a wide variety of technological tools to enhance their future success as students and workers.
 * It is imperative for all students to have access to information via technology as a basis for lifelong learning.
 * It is essential for all learners, including educators, to process and manage information through the skillful use of technology.
 * Skillful use of technology supports the development of process skills such as flexibility, adaptability, critical thinking, problem solving and collaboration which are essential to success in our rapidly changing information age.
 * Networked technology systems permit efficient and effective communications within and outside the institution.
 * Technology allows us to better serve the diverse learning styles of our students and educate them for a wider range of intelligence (e.g., verbal/linguistic, logical/mathematical, visual/spatial, bodily/kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, and interpersonal).
 * Technology maximizes productivity and efficiency and enables schools to better prepare students for future learning.
 * Our school must prepare students for today's workplace and the workplace of the future.
 * Our institution can not allow itself to fall technologically behind other area high schools.
 * The technology in the classrooms is a direct reflection on how well we are meeting the needs of our students.