Technology Plan

A majority of classrooms currently have SMART Projectors that staff use to enhance their teaching strategies and improve student engagement. A good portion of these SMART Projectors have lost their touch capability due to the white boards warping over time making the interactivity unusable. Last year the Technology Department submitted a grant which provided funds for the purchase of presentation devices that allowed for interactivity for teachers. The school district received $300,000 from O.S.P.I. to purchase new presentation devices. The grant allows the Technology Department to purchase 55 interactive panels that will be provided to the schools. The funds for the additional purchases of interactive panels will come from the Technology Levy. There is also an allocation from the grant that will be used to provide professional development for staff on the use of the interactive panels once the devices have been provided to staff.

The all-in-one computers that have been deployed to the schools and most often found on the teacher’s desk have reached their end of life and needed to be replaced. These all in ones have been hooked up to the SMART Projectors since they were installed. The technology department have been removing the all-in-ones and replacing them with an older model laptop. These older laptops became available when the department purchased new laptops for certificated staff. If teachers requested a monitor for their desk they were provided one. The older laptop stays on their desk as the new laptop is used as their mobile device. The Technology Department is currently researching what the next generation of presentation computers will be.

The last generation of Kindergarten iPads that were purchased have reached their end of life and can no longer be upgraded to meet the requirements of the online programs that are used in the classrooms. The Technology Department has purchased new iPads, cases, charging carts and soon to be headphones for all Kindergarten students in the school district. This allows the Kindergarten students to access the same material on-line just as their peers in other grade levels. iPads were deemed to be much easier for these young learners to navigate verses using a Chromebook.

Last year the school district went one to one in grades 6-12 with respect to Chromebook distribution. This meant that all secondary students had a Chromebook that they could take back and forth from school to home each day. There has been an adjustment to this protocol after last year’s pilot of this initiative. For students in grades 9-12, the protocol remained unchanged. Students in grades 6-8 will not be issued a Chromebook this year, instead they use the Chromebooks that are in each classrooms Chromebook cart. Older Chromebooks can be checked out of the school library for at home use and will be treated just as other resources that are checked out of the library. Chromebooks for students in grades 1-5 remained unchanged as they use the Chromebooks out of the carts in each of their classrooms. The department purchased 200 new Chromebooks to replaced aging ones and increase the total number of Chromebooks in the middle school’s Chromebook carts.

The Technology Department continues to support the Creative Learning Labs in grades K-8. The levy funds pay the teacher’s salaries, some of the supplies, the curriculum and the lease on the computers used in the lab. There has been an upgrade to the curriculum this year and we are working with one of the teachers at this time to make the transition to the new curriculum. The teacher the department is currently working with is on the cutting edge of this upgrade and when she has made the transition, the department will facilitate the changes at other sites as well.

The Technology Department is currently preparing the school district’s network for an upgrade. This upgrade will increase the capacity of our network to handle more information in a much faster manner. This upgrade will make the school district’s internet speed competitive with other organizations in the area and in some cases exceed what other organizations can do. Currently the Technology Department has replaced the old switches used in our system and making other upgrades to the servers in order to handle the expansion of the network system. The Technology Department will also be upgrading the access points to the new standards known as WiFi-6E. e-Rate funding pays for 80% of this initiative and is expected to be completed next summer.