Technology
PORTS contains two main technology components: online lesson plans and video conferencing.
1. Online lesson plans: In order to access the online lesson plans, the following products are necessary:
- Microsoft Windows or Macintosh computer connected to the internet
- A Web Browser such as Microsoft Internet Expolorer, Firefox, or Safari
- Windows Media Player for Windows or Macintosh
- Apple QuickTime for Windows or Macintosh
- Microsoft Word
- Microsoft Powerpoint
- Adobe Reader for Windows or Macintosh
- Digital Camera
- TV or LCD projector
2. Videoconferencing: In order to utilize PORTS’s videoconferencing programs, the following products are necessary:
- High Speed Internet
- Videoconferencing Unit
- TV or LCD Projector
PORTS often loans equipment to schools that do not have access to any of the above items.
PORTS operates on California’s K-12 High Speed Network (HSN). Because many of the programs require classrooms to have the capacity to receive information at speeds of up to 300 kilobyte per second, and some even require the classroom to be able to receive information at 768 KB per second or higher, it is advisable that classrooms be connected to the HSN if they wish to participate in these programs. However, it is possible to use PORTS without being connected to the HSN.
PORTS’s video streaming files require that classrooms receive information at speeds of 300 KB per second or higher. They also require classrooms to have Windows Media Player installed. In order to utilize PORTS’s videoconferencing programs, classrooms must have a connection speed of at least 384 KB per second. Some programs (ie- programs from remote locations, or programs that include a great deal of movement) may require higher speeds.
Read more about this topic: Parks Online Resources For Teachers And Students
Famous quotes containing the word technology:
“If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation. Whoever concerns himself with big technology, either to push it forward or to stop it, is gambling in human lives.”
—Freeman Dyson (b. 1923)
“Radio put technology into storytelling and made it sick. TV killed it. Then you were locked into somebody else’s sighting of that story. You no longer had the benefit of making that picture for yourself, using your imagination. Storytelling brings back that humanness that we have lost with TV. You talk to children and they don’t hear you. They are television addicts. Mamas bring them home from the hospital and drag them up in front of the set and the great stare-out begins.”
—Jackie Torrence (b. 1944)
“If the technology cannot shoulder the entire burden of strategic change, it nevertheless can set into motion a series of dynamics that present an important challenge to imperative control and the industrial division of labor. The more blurred the distinction between what workers know and what managers know, the more fragile and pointless any traditional relationships of domination and subordination between them will become.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)