Regina Elementary teachers have spent the past year looking into what can enhance their teaching.
Through some generous individual gifts, Regina Foundation and Regina Elementary Home and School, interactive SMART Boards now appear in eight classrooms. There are also interactive projectors in five classrooms.
Teachers have been enthusiastic about using these new tools to enhance their day with students. First-grade teacher Katy Lincoln loves her new SMART Board. “The SMART Board has brought my lessons alive by giving me a wide range of ideas and options to choose from that simply enhance my students’ involvement within the lesson,” she comments.
Teachers started this school year with additional SMART Board training.
Technology enhancements not only include hardware, but software upgrades. Barb McGee, elementary technology coordinator, comments, “Since I came to Regina two years ago, great strides have been made in the area of technology. We have a wonderful computer lab with 30 new iMac computers. Having a SMART Board in the lab allows students to interact with the activity in a group setting, before going to work on their individual computers.
“We also subscribe to two online learning aids. ‘Education City’ provides language arts and math activities for grades kindergarten to five. The classroom teachers select activities to correspond with what students are learning in the classroom. ‘Fact4Me’ is a research site developed especially for elementary students. This site has been used by students in grades two to six to find information for class projects.”
In addition to these classroom advances, center-wide progress was made over the summer as technology director Jess Pizana had three servers decommissioned and replaced with one physical server, with eight virtual servers.
Also, the center has been working on a new website that went live on Oct. 3. The website address is still www.icregina.com. Elementary teachers have received training in website development and work diligently at putting all of their weekly activities on their individual classroom websites. This tool offers an easy mode of communication between school and home.
Technology is an integral part of the enhancement of programming at Regina Elementary.
