The Babylon School District’s mission is to incorporate technology into the educational program to create an environment that provides our students, staff, and community with the following:

With sufficient technology, materials, and staff development time, students will utilize technology in the classroom regularly; gathering, assimilating, organizing, and presenting information related to the curriculum. We acknowledge the fact that the world is more complex and demanding than ever before. The total scope of knowledge and skill of our students must be much greater than in the past. This places new demands and expectations on our educational system. Reflection on national and state educational restructuring brings to light the competition between an educational system designed for the industrial age and the reality of the current information age.

The Babylon School District technology curriculum is structured to offer to students a fully integrated use of new technologies to prepare them for the 21st Century. This requires that on-going adjustments be made to our learning activities and teaching strategies per the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) recommendations. It is also a top priority of the district to ensure that equitable access to the use of technology for all of our students and staff be provided at all times.

Traditional Learning Environment:	Babylon Learning Environment:
Teacher-centered instruction	Student-centered instruction
Single sense stimulation	Multi-senory stimulation
Single path progression	Multi-path progression
Single media	Multimedia
Isolated work	Collaborative work
Information delivery	Information exchange
Passive learning	Active/exploratory/inquiry-based-learning
Factual, knowledge-based learning	Critical thinking and information decision-making
Reactive response	Proactive/planned action
Isolated, artificial context	Authentic, real-world context

 

There is a critical need for our students to be able to access information, manipulate data, synthesize concepts, and creatively express ideas to others using text, video, and audio media. This wide variety of media allows us to serve the diverse learning styles of our students and educate them in a wide range of multiple intelligences that include verbal/linguistic, logical/mathematical, visual/spatial, bodily/kinesthetic, musical, intrapersonal, interpersonal, and naturalistic. On-going societal transformations and workplace demands will require our students to learn to take responsibility for much of their own learning. We must provide students with broader opportunities to construct their own knowledge. Evolving educational reform is dependent on the adequate and appropriate infusion of technology in school that can support an ever-changing educational system, and develop life-long learners who will become productive and successful citizens. Babylon will provide the necessary staff development programs so that the district’s teachers can prepare students for today’s workplace and the workplace of the 21st Century.