It’s a digital vision for public education’s future:
An open technology environment where high school students can bring laptops, iPads and other Internet-connected devices from home and use them at school.
An increased emphasis on technology in elementary classrooms, too, with school-provided laptops for elementary and middle school students.
Expanded availability of wireless-Internet access for Web users at school. More classroom assignments posted online. Stronger digital integration across the board.
All those concepts, among related ideas, were recommended to the State College Area school board Wednesday night.
They came from a district Future of Technology committee, represented by district technology director Tom Mincemoyer.
He said the overall vision could be implemented without increasing the district’s $2 million annual budget for computer equipment, in part by encouraging families of high school students to provide devices for their kids. Financial assistance could be made available for those who can’t afford such equipment, Mincemoyer said.
Computers on the elementary and middle school levels would be provided by the district. The 7,200-student public school system already has about 4,000 laptops available for student use.
‘Student technology competence is the groundwork for everything else that goes on,’ Mincemoyer told the board Wednesday. He said the committee’s recommended approach would help students to encourage their teachers’ use of technology, particularly at State College Area High School.
‘One real shortcoming with our model right now is that the teacher decides when technology is used,’ Mincemoyer said. Under the committee’s vision, he said, the student would, in effect, help decide, too.
The committee began reviewing technology-use options a number of months ago, at the request of the board.
Farther back, the board had been working toward a one-to-one technology goal: one school-supplied computer per student. Starting about eight years ago, the board managed to double, to $2 million, the amount it budgets annually for new computers and digital infrastructure.
But board stopped bumping up the line item by 2009, as financial conditions tightened. (Reaching the one-to-one goal would require about $3.5 million in total annual spending on new hardware and infrastructure, Mincemoyer said. That extra money doesn’t appear likely to materialize any time soon.)
And so the board asked the committee, made up largely of school faculty and staff members, to consider how the district could continue pursuing better technology integration — at a limited cost.
The group calls its pitch an ‘any time, anywhere’ plan. Starting in the next school year, the plan suggests, high school students would be allowed to bring their own Internet-enabled devices from home and use them on a district wireless network. (Right now, State High students can do that only in the school libraries.)
At the elementary and middle schools, technology integration would be ramped up gradually through the 2011-2012 school year. By the 2012-2013 year, according to the recommended plan, kindergarten through second-grade classes would use shared classroom sets of iPads; third- and fourth-graders would use sets of classroom laptops; and fifth graders would work with one laptop apiece in school.
By sixth grade, students would be able to begin taking their school-supplied laptops home with them. And in seventh and eighth grades, students would be assigned individual laptops that they could take home, too.
By high school, though, students would need to supply all their own equipment — except in cases of financial need.
Mincemoyer said professional development for faculty and staff would ‘be absolutely huge’ in facilitating the shift, also endorsed by the district’s Citizens’ Advisory Committee for Technology.
To move forward with the plan, he said, the district would need a blessing from the board by April 30. That would allow students to begin connecting their own devices more easily to the school network starting in 2011-2012.
If there were overwhelming backlash against the plan, leaders said, the district could recalibrate its approach before changes take effect in the elementary and middle schools in fall 2012.
Board members appeared generally supportive of the concept. Several said the district should proceed thoughtfully, considering how to address parents who may resist the shift and faculty members who may fear the change, as well.
‘If we’re directing resources in this direction to enhance learning, how do we know ultimately that we’ve done that?’ board President Ann McGlaughlin said. She encouraged some method to gauge the impact of any technology-use shifts.
McGlaughlin also said the district should seek community, faculty and student input in advance.
‘We’re going to have to feel our way through this,’ acting Superintendent Mike Hardy said. He said the district is entering ‘uncharted waters.’
Mincemoyer said he fully expects some pushback against the concept.
‘It could be massive; it could be earth-shaking,’ he said of the opposition. ‘But if this is the strategy we want to use, then we need to be preparing ourselves for that and building a case.’
The board is expected to take up the issue again in the coming weeks.
Earlier coverage
