Leveraging Technology Initiative

EME5050 – ABC Post (Week 2)


It is the 21st Century and technology is advancing so rapidly that the nation’s public school systems are literally not able to keep up with the pace. The task of providing our students with an education that will help them stay competitive in the global market in which we live is monumental at best, and soon it will be insurmountable. This is why the School District of Clay County, Florida is piloting the Leveraging Technology Initiative in two of its schools during this school year in 2010-2011. One senior high school and one junior high school were chosen to participate in the pilot. Any data gathered from this process should prove to be helpful in the future as we continue to strive to provide an equitable technology model across the district. There are several theories on which the Leveraging Technology Initiative is based and a plan has been set in motion to gradually introduce this pilot at each school, one grade level at a time. To help you more fully understand the potential of this pilot, the remainder of this post will introduce the ideas on which it is founded, describe the procedures that have been developed, and outline the stages at which this pilot will progress. It will also primarily focus on how the Leveraging Technology Initiative is currently being used at the senior high school.

One of the theories that helped spark this initiative is the idea that it could be more cost effective and less time consuming if public school systems allowed students to bring their own Internet-ready devices to school to use for Internet-based class activities and assignments. This would then help lessen the burden that almost all school districts face today as they struggle to provide equitable access to these types of devices for the pupils in their classrooms. It probably won’t surprise you that we have found that not all of the senior high students have Internet-ready devices of their own to bring to school, but we’ve also found that many of them do.

For this type of endeavor to be successful there must be a few guidelines and procedures in place. We started the process with a steering committee which consisted of district level personnel, along with the school administrators, media specialists and some of the school’s teachers who were proven technology leaders. This committee decided which types of devices the students would be allowed to bring in, how these devices would be “officially approved” for use in the classroom, and how students would be identified as approved participants in the pilot. The first and foremost of the established guidelines for the pilot is that student may only use their Internet-ready devices under the direction of a classroom teacher.

This particular school involved in this initiative is a brand new senior high school and it only has ninth, tenth, and eleventh grade students. A document entitled Protocol for the Use of Electronic Devices on Campus will be sent home first with the eleventh graders, and when this happens in mid-February, it will signify the official start of the Leveraging Technology Initiative. In order for students to bring their own Internet-ready devices in to use for teacher-directed classroom activities and assignments, there are a few steps they must successfully complete first:

• The protocol document that was taken home to parents must be completed and signed by both the student and his/her parent(s).

• Students must take their completed protocol documents and their Internet-ready devices to the school media center where they will be checked by one of the media specialists to make sure they meet all pilot requirements. (The only devices that students will be allowed to bring in to use at school are smart phones, iPads, iPods, Netbooks, and laptops). To signify that a student has been approved to use his/her own Internet-ready device at school under the direction of a teacher, the media specialist will punch the student’s school ID card with a special hole punch. Note: If for some reason a student loses this privilege, another special hole punch will be used on the student’s school ID card as an indication.

Throughout the pilot, the steering committee will remain the driving force behind the program and its members will be continually monitoring the progress. When it appears that the other two grade levels are ready to proceed, the pilot will be extended to them as well.

I hope that during the next few weeks I will be able to share an update on how the Leveraging Technology Initiative is going so far at both the junior high and senior high pilot schools in Clay County.