The Dalton Technology Plan

Building on the foundation established by Dalton's historical commitment to experimentation and reform and the school's efforts to promote a healthy evolution of its own curricula, the New Laboratory for Teaching and Learning provides a vehicle for Dalton faculty and students to pursue innovative strategies for teaching and learning, using technology.

Under the auspices of NLTL, and supported by generous grants, The Dalton Technology Plan was developed to enhance communication within the community, create a new awareness of the range of information locally and globally available, and to provide a powerful array of tools that make possible new modes of analysis and curricular expression. The technology program encourages an educational environment free of traditional constraints of time, resources, and space; where cooperation is a significant motivator, and inquiry and self-guided learning have intrinsic value.

The technology program supports and enhances the way writing, literature, math, science, language, art, and history are taught at Dalton. NLTL provides tudents with an array of powerful tools that allow them to focus their energy on problem-solving and higher level thinking skills. Interactive multimedia programs and tools have been integrated into assignments in a differentiated, interdisciplinary, and constructivist way throughout the curriculum facilitate scholarship and intellectual inquiry.

Through the technology program, collaborative efforts between NLTL and the faculty have produced many programs, projects, and initiatives - including the new Faculty Summer Laptop Program - that support the teaching and learning goals of the Dalton Plan.

Dalton faculty and students make use of Digital Portfolios and collections of shared digital images, audio, video, and text. Students not only learn about different fields but are essentially able to function as archaeologists, mathematicians, astronomers, and historians with the help of technology:

a third grade class researches Native American tribes and then writes, films, edits, and produces newscasts about these groups;

using Archaeotype, sixth graders are introduced to the history of ancient Greece and Assyria through simulated archeological excavations;

The Decades Project enables eighth graders to become teachers as they work in small groups to prepare multimedia projects about a decade of American history and then present their lessons to the whole class;

in The Lorca Project, students of Hispanic Literature create hypermedia books as they unravel the complex world created by Federico Garcia Lorca's art, poetry and music.

Dalton continues to be recognized nationally for its achievements in designing methods by which new technologies can improve and redefine education. By encouraging students and faculty to pursue new knowledge that taps into individual interests, the technology program supports the Dalton Plan in ways Helen Parkhurst and her associates could not have imagined but, we believe, would have wholeheartedly embraced.