Academic Technology Coaches
The Academic Technology Coach team works to provide instructional coaching practices, focusing on 1:1 coaching helping a teacher hit a specific goal through the use of instructional practices. Our coaching framework is based on Jim Knight's The Impact Cycle (Identify, Learn, Improve). This will include facilitating technology integration, co-planning w/teachers, model teaching, co-teaching, assisting with classroom organization/management, campus/PLC planning, and staff development. Coaches support NISD campuses by transforming schools into digital-age, student engaged, global learning environments. They help teachers and administrators successfully implement 21st Century skills in all classrooms with all students. All means all!
Our fundamental purpose is to support the growth of educators, through job-embedded coaching, in the delivery of high quality, tier-one instruction to help all students succeed.
Elementary STEM Labs
Northside Elementary schools currently rotate between Music, Art, Physical Education, and a technology course. Depending on the campus, this course is either Tech Apps or STEM Lab.
This newly designed course creates opportunities for students to experience critical thinking, collaboration, and problem solving through Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, Makerspace, engineering, and computer coding type activities while providing student choice. The focus of this course is to provide exposure to rigorous real-world problems that must be solved in a creative manner using the NISD Design Process. Students will work together in collaborative teams to brainstorm, design, create, test, and reflect a solution to these real world problems using various topics of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.
Tech Apps
This course is designed to ensure internalization of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) designed written for Technology Applications. These TEKS are designed to ensure our students will become fluent in the 21st century skills that will allow them to lead in the future age as our landscape continues to evolve with future technologies. Much of the curriculum is written around Digital Citizenship as navigating the virtual world is an imperative skill in our ever changing digital lives.
Cyber Security Club
What makes a strong password? Should you click on that link? Is this a real email? These are questions that we face daily in this new digital world. These clubs are designed to introduce the thinking and logic behind these topics, and touch on high level topics such as network, cloud, and mobile security. This field is expanding at an exponential rate and these after school groups will produce an advantage for all participating students.
Coding Club
Computer code is the language that drives our digital world, and coding skills are transitioning from complex generalizations to practical applications that benefit all learners. With applications across the curriculum, the coding club is designed to strengthen student’s computational thinking skills through engaging and rigorous activities. This after school program blends online and in-person lessons to ensure students make connections between the theoretical background of coding and the real world applications that we interact with everyday.
eSports
Video games are much more than just a Friday night activity! College Scholarships are just the beginning for several professional video game competitions. Imagine a football game in which new positions are constantly being added all with different rules of engagement or ways of passing, carrying or throwing the ball. There are a multitude of match-ups, counters and blocks which players can employ, and only those clever and strategic athletes can hope to excel. This is the environment of eSports, and these are the benefits we aim to instill in our players throughout the district.