Morley Stanwood Community Schools

Morley Stanwood Community Schools is a small rural school district (approximately 1,640 students and 100 faculty members) in North Central Michigan, with a high percentage of students receiving free and reduced lunch and a 15% special education population. We feel that technology creates significant opportunities for our students. We firmly believe that our graduates must be technologically literate. We believe that in order to compete globally, our schools and our students must utilize modern technology. To that end we have linked the Middle School with fiber optic as part of the Wide Area Network. Both of the elementary schools (Morley and Stanwood) have a Point-to-Point shared T1 connection with the High School. The district's Alternative Education School has high speed internet connection provided by the local cable company. Our plan is to continue to support a variety of up-to-date applications. The benefits will include student familiarity with a variety of technological applications. All of these applications will support our quest to produce learners who can think, communicate, and produce quality work. Links to core curricular areas allow students to manipulate data, make predictions, and publish results. Thus, student reports and presentations become an integral part of their education here at Morley Stanwood. This helps us develop a "learner-centered" curriculum as opposed to a "teacher-centered" one. Benefits to our staff include the ability to enhance teaching by being able to (1) respond to highly technical student questions, (2) provide access to a wide variety of enrichment within specific curricular guidelines, and (3) introduce students to a global perspective (This last is particularly important for a small, rural school like Morley Stanwood.). Teachers are also able to direct students to share their work with a wider audience. Since students are able to exchange information with others electronically, our school continues to build vital links to not only our local community, but also ...