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Exemplary Technology-Supported Schooling Cases in the USA
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School Reports & Videos > Mantua Elementary
Mantua Elementary: A Basic School Powered by Technology

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Case Overview
Mantua Elementary School provides general and gifted education for 799 neighborhood students in grades K-6 and specialized education for deaf and hard-of-hearing children age 2 through sixth grade. The school is located in Virginia, in an upper-middle-class community within commuting distance of Washington, DC. The student body is 3% black, 6% Hispanic, and 19% Asian, with 8% eligible for free and reduced lunch.

The major instructional innovation supported by technology at Mantua is the One-to-One program, which provides every fifth- and sixth-grader with full-time use of a laptop computer. Through the school's partnership with Bell Atlantic, Mantua has also developed a comprehensive distance learning program and an on-site video production facility.

Mantua received a community grant in 1997 that helped it establish the integral use of technology throughout its instructional programs, including the Total Communications Center for the Deaf. The school adopted an integration model described by the late Dr. Ernest Boyer in his report The Basic School: A Community for Learning. These integrative priorities are intended to provide support for the learning of the whole child throughout the whole school: the school as community, a curriculum with coherence, a climate for learning, and a commitment to character. The Boyer model provides Mantua with a way to measure whether the integration of technology is consistent with the overall beliefs and goals that the school has subscribed to.

As a consequence of technology's integral role at Mantua, the innovative instructional use of technology is prevalent throughout the school and includes classroom computers, a technology computer lab, a distance learning lab, a closed-circuit TV production studio, and student use of wireless laptops, Apple eMates, and AlphaSmart word processors.

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