Dear Parents/Guardians,

I hope and pray this letter finds you enjoying a wonderful summer. We need your help. This letter is to encourage you to help us assess our options as we attempt to better serve our students at Living Word.

Our mission statement reads “to provide quality education
in a Christian environment for lifelong leadership in God’s kingdom”. Well, if we are to provide “quality education” we need to be cognizant of a changing world. Whether we like it or not, the Internet has become an integral part of life in the 21st century. The
statistics are staggering—here are just a few—96 percent of nine to seventeen year olds embrace the Web 2.0 culture of social networking, blogging, twittering, etc. at some level. They spend on average nine hours per week outside of school using social
networking. Teens average 2800 texts per month, fifteen times the average number of voice calls they log each month. I could go on and on.
Change is a part of life—“Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable and perfect.”
Romans 12:2

We could sit back and believe that the way we learned is good enough for our children or we can understand that students will be expected to be active participants in virtual communities not just passive observers. Skills needed for tomorrow are critical and
creative thinking, self-direction, collaboration, multimodal learning, and adaptability. If you are in the work force, you already know this and are adapting or being left behind.

I would like to believe that we all want what is best for our children to succeed in this world.

So in a roundabout way this brings me back to the meaning of this letter. We would like you to participate in a survey concerning hand held mobile devices. We need to understand how many of our students are now able to connect to the internet via their cell
phone, ipod, ipad, or other device. Tim Gast, our IT guru, has created a brief survey tohelp us move forward in formulating our technology plan. Please follow the link below and take the survey. Thanks for your help and blessings on the rest
of your summer.

In His Service,

Dr. Cary Stelmachowicz
Executive Director
Living Word Lutheran High School

Mobile-Learning Technology Survey