Lee's Summit North High School Story
Lee's Summit North High School
Lee's Summit, Missouri

System Champion:
John Biggerstaff

SNS Community:
Entire high school of approximately 1800 students and teachers.

System:
Dell Pentium III, 500 mhz, 13 Gig, RedHat Linux 6.2

Getting Started:
Lee's Summit High Schools and the Center for Technology Innovation in Education (CTIE) have a history of collaborating on innovative uses of technology in education. In 1993, based on the innovative and highly successful teaching approaches of John Biggerstaff and Jim Nazworthy, an NSF grant (Project MOST) was secured to advance and study the use of computational science and project based learning. One of the outcomes of Project MOST was collaboration around the use of the Interactive Shared Journal System. The journal system was used to connect preservice teachers at MU with high school students doing advanced projects. In the Winter of 1999 a team of leaders from Lee's Summit North High School met with CTIE to discuss adapting the journal system to meet their need for an electronic portfolio system for every student. They envisioned that every student would develop and maintain a collection of electronic documents representing their best work, so that it could be shared with parents, teachers, college admissions officers, and future employers. The objectives of the Lee's Summit North team led to the creation of Review Groups as a mechanism in SNS to allow students to post their work and invite reviewers to examine and leave comments. Lee's Summit North's goal is to have all teachers and students able to use SNS to implement an electronic portfolio system. It is also expected that some teachers and students will try out other features of SNS as they become familiar and comfortable with its use.

Accomplishments and Challenges:
John Biggerstaff has participated with the CTIE development team in trying out pilot versions of the SNS system. During the Fall of 2000 teachers are being trained and having discussions about the best approaches to implement SNS with students. Teachers are now bringing the first groups of students in to utilize SNS. Eight teachers are involved in this first round of use with additional teachers expected to begin utilization in the spring. One initial focus group is the 9th grade Team at LSNHS and another is the At-Risk group there. International Baccalaureate Program students and Advanced Placement students in biology and mathematics will also test out the system. Art students will test the systems ability to make their art portfolios available.