The use of technology is very important to our society.  All students are provided equitable opportunities to use technology as one of many tools in their learning process.  It is our belief that students learn best when they are engaged in meaningful activities where they are able to work with others in order to construct a product that shows their knowledge. Technology is always used with close supervision by adults and clear learning objectives.

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• The computer lab is home to 28 new (2005) multimedia PC computers.
• Each classroom has at least 3 current multimedia PC computer.
• Each classroom, office space, the library and the computer lab is fully networked.
• The teachers are involved in ongoing professional development with technology such as study groups, grade level collaboration, attending college classes such as RETA and Intel Teach to the Future.
• Petroglyph has a full time technology coordinator/teacher on staff.

Teachers develop lessons that integrate technology with the theme or learning concepts they are studying.  All Kindergarten through fifth grade classes work in the computer lab one day a week for sixty minutes.    Students can continue work in their classrooms on their classroom computers.  Our technology curriculum is guided by several of the following sources:

• National Educational Technology Standards (NETS)
• Petroglyph's Technology Skills Assessment
• Petroglyph's Long Range Plans for Technology
  
• New Mexico Technology Standards (integrated within subject areas)
  
• Acceptable Use Policy

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Each student who will be using the Internet for research and learning activities will need to sign an Acceptable Use Policy along with their parent(s) or guardian(s) before using the Internet.  Our Acceptable Use Policy is online.    Student may create web pages or publish their work on the Web.  In order to publish on the web a Permission to Publish form must be signed and returned. Some of the Web sites teachers and students find useful can be found at the Web Resources page.

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Our Intermediate computer lab (CyberSpace) was updated in January 2005 with newer computers and flat screen monitors.   The third, fourth and fifth grade students are very excited.  There will be 28 Pentium 4 computers with 512 Mb of RAM, which will provide faster, more reliability for those video and multimedia projects!

                              
In April of 2004 we opened our newest computer lab for primary students.  We call it "The Mouse House" because our computer mice are specially decorated as ladybugs, bumblebees and frogs.  Also each computer is named after a fictional mouse such as Fredrick, by Leo Leonni or If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.  The keyboards, furniture, and software were chosen to be developmentally appropriate for our younger learners.  There are 27 Gateway computers, a projector, a SmartBoard and two laser printers that also assist our teaching and learning.

Classrooms have at least one newer Gateway computer with an Intel Pentium 4 processor and Windows XP.  There are also two or three other "good old standby computers" with Celeron 433 Mhz processors.  The operating system is Windows '98.

Our teachers are finding laptop computers to be very beneficial for developing curriculum and professional productivity.

The types of software we use for productivity are Microsoft Office 2000 or XP.  The third through fifth grade students use PowerPoint when creating multimedia presentations.  They also use Excel to make charts, graphs and spreadsheets. Other publishing projects are accomplished using Microsoft Word and Publisher. The Kindergarten through second grade students use Word, for word processing and KidPix for multimedia presentations.  We also have an assortment of educational software that the students enjoy learning with such as Kidspiration, KidKeys, Reader Rabbit, Math Rabbit, Where in the U.S.A. is Carmen SanDiego, Clue Finders Third and Fourth Grade Adventures and Oregon Trail, to mention a few.

All student save their work to a network server, where they can access their files from anywhere in the school.  This provides security from loss and more flexibility to begin projects in the computer lab and finish them in classrooms.

We have some fun multimedia tools to use as well.   Popular tools include 13 Sony digital cameras and 2 digital video cameras.  Teachers and students love to take these on field trips and then import the pictures and video clips into their own multimedia field trip. With our scanners, students can scan artwork, pictures or personal treasures to use in a multimedia project as well. We also have a projector that displays the computer image onto the SmartBoard so that students can view the instructions given by the teacher, or the presentations by fellow classmates. The SmartBoard also helps with instruction by creating a large, interacitve touch screen.  The read-writeable CD Roms will be useful as students begin to make and save digital portfolios.

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