 Lauren BakerEducational Technology Consultant
Overview
It is hard for me to believe 2008-09 will be my 15th year working with Chester-Andover and Cavendish Town Elementary Schools. At Chester-Andover, I started very part-time with a school wide network of around 40 computers, one file server, a couple miscellaneous printers and no internet connection at all.
Now we have a wireless network throughout the building with servers providing a variety of services from email to web site to file serving to print services, reading assessment to student records, special education forms...on and on that need to be tended to.
The network supports approximately 130 wireless laptop computers and 20 desktop computers that are heavily used throughout the school day by teachers and students. They are not only connected to each other through our building network but to the world through our VTel SDSL broadband, "always on" internet service.
Life Before Chester-Andover
Before coming to Chester-Andover I had worked for nearly 15 years as an IBM Systems Engineer in St. Louis, Missouri and Salt Lake City, Utah and as Product Administrator for large systems databases in Atlanta. My husband, Gary, and I took advantage of IBM's downsizing efforts in the early '90s and left IBM to join with some others to form a new company called The Quality Group, Inc, which marketed and supported high end multi-media training (laser disc systems) to manufacturing companies nationally. We chose to support just the Northeast and formed our own company in Vermont called The Quality Group Northeast, Inc.
Enter - Educational Technology
Spending my time applying the use of technology to improve learning opportunities for students in our own town soon became my primary pursuit. It's hard to believe that I had never seen or touched a Macintosh computer before working with the schools here. I did learn to appreciate very quickly how well suited the Macintosh was for enhancing learning as the tools support creativity and experimentation. I was selected by Apple in 2003 to be an Apple Distinguished Educator along with around 100 others across the country. The program does give me access to additional resources and opportunities that I can use with the schools I work with.
Thanks
I would like to thank the community for supporting our efforts to integrate technology into the learning process. I believe you have helped the school be prepared to meet the challenges of the national standard of having technology literate students by the end of grade 8 and meeting Vermont's Grade Expectation in technology. (See Vermont's Grade Expectations in Information Technology)
The formal education stuff
American International School, Vienna, Austria (High School); Williams College, BA, major in Physics; Washington University School of Engineering, BSME
My husband, Gary and I also stay busy trying to keep up with our three busy children ages 19, 16 and 9.
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