School District’s technology initiative sees early success
By Tracy Ouellette
Editor
When the kids in the East Troy Community School District started the school year Sept. 1 the term “hands on” took on a whole new meaning with the rolling out of the district’s technology initiative to get a computer or tablet into the hands of every student.
Beginning this year, every student in third through 12th grade received their own Chromebook and kids in kindergarten through second grade were provided with iPads at a ration of one device for every two students. Children in fifth through 12th grade can even take the devices home with them.
The district-wide 1:1, 2:1 effort began more than two years ago when the School Board approved the initiative. After wiggling out the financing for the program, devices were purchased for the teachers in the 2014-15 school year so they would be able to learn how to best use them in the classroom. The School District also provided training for the teachers last year in preparation for the students to have the devices this year.
At the Sept. 28 annual meeting of the School District, Director of Technology Justin Modrak said the new devices were working well for the students and teacher and so far there had only been about 45 in need of repair out of the 960 handed out. He said about half of those repairs were warranty issues and the other half were things like broken screens, which seemed to be the most common damage they’ve seen.
He said he was very happy with how the district’s expanded wireless network was working and there didn’t seem to be any problems with the older kids (grades 5-12) taking the devices home to work with.
English teacher Claudia Felske said she was thrilled with how well things had been going over the first month.
“I am amazed at the increase in instructional time,” Felske said. “In my room, students previously went to the Chromebook cart each day for their assigned device and then put them away at the end of the period. Now that students have the devices with them, we easily save five minutes per period – over the course of the year, that’s 15 additional hours of instructional time for one class, which is enormous.
“On top of that, they’re taking the devices home, so I can count on all the resources we use in class being available to them at home, fully extending their learning outside the classroom.”
Felske also shared emails from the teachers about their experiences in the classroom, which she had requested for the annual meeting presentation.
The teachers pointed out the time-savings as well, saying it was so much easier to have the technology in the classroom instead of having to book time in the computer lab. Several teachers also said the technology (Learn More here) was engaging the kids at a deeper level, as well as offering choices they never had before.
“Students are empowered to search for an answers to their questions,” high school math teacher Colleen Heitl wrote. “Even if they can’t arrive at an answer, they are learning to scrutinize web results and synthesize pieces of information from multiple sources.”
“It elevates the projects I do by giving students more ‘voice and choice’,” fourth-fifth-grade teacher Melissa Deutch wrote. “It allows students to fully research and develop their topics. Before I had the computers, students were limited to the topics they could choose from the resources I had or the topics in their textbooks. Now there is no limit to what they come up with!”
Felske said Monday afternoon she wanted the community to know that the devices are tools in the classroom, used to enhance learning and they weren’t taking the place of teaching or student collaboration.
“It’s just one more avenue for learning,” she said. “It’s not like we use the devices for 100 percent of classroom time. That’s not what we want; we want discussion; we want collaboration; we want communication. This is just one more tool for learning.”
Felske said the teachers were embracing the devices too, and learning new ways to use them in the classroom daily.
“We have tech coaches in each building to help the teachers,” Felske said. “We also have a release day once a month where teachers can get extra help. It’s not required, but the tech coaches have full schedules, so that’s really encouraging.”
As with all new programs in the schools, there will be a learning curve but so far, the 1:1, 2:1 initiative seems to be a success in the East Troy schools.
“It’s a process, but we’ve had good feedback so far and just having the devices opens up so many possibilities. It’s very exciting,” Felske said.
