Working Together To Make The Most Of Technology

State-of-the-art digital cameras and microscopes that are connected to computers are just a few of the things that help Bunshaft capture the interest of his science students.

Thanks to grants and donations, his old school was technology rich, but no one developed a plan to integrate the technology into the classroom, so most equipment sat unused or broken. P.S. 131Q, on the other hand, has an active school community that works together to devise ways to use technology to enhance learning, Bunshaft explains.

The contrasting scenarios illustrate the fact that schools can have the latest, greatest equipment, but it’s rendered useless without a well-developed program for maintaining and integrating the technology into the curriculum. To devise such a plan, schools need to bring together school communities to gather ideas, input, talent and resources.

“Community buy-in and participation are very important,” explains Amy Kersten, who is a parent volunteer who became the technology coordinator at Holy Family School, a K-8 parochial school in Davenport, Iowa.

When Kersten, who previously worked in the software industry, started volunteering at the school nearly a decade ago, there was a sparse supply of computers. Shortly after she was hired, the school won a grant to upgrade and wire its infrastructure. From there, the school got desktops for every classroom, along with wireless notebooks. Last fall, Holy Family won a wireless lab from CDW•G and Discovery Channel School. (See “Planning Plus Kismet” on p. 55.)

Now children who are in kindergarten create slide shows, while second-graders produce reports on the solar system. Eighth-graders use educational software to build Web sites about public figures that have influenced their lives.

“Technology is not an inexpensive resource, but it’s a very valuable resource when it’s used correctly, so you have to plan,” Kersten says. “It can’t just be technology for technology’s sake. It has to enhance instruction in some way.

“Our students just assume that technology is going to be part of their lives,” she adds. “It’s like coming to school and seeing a chalkboard there.”

For Kersten, technology isn’t the most important element in a strong technology program. Teachers are.

The proof can be found in Holy Family’s past. Even when Kersten could count the school’s computers on her hands, a few tech-savvy teachers figured out how to work technology into their classrooms.

Holy Family helped its teachers get comfortable with computers by encouraging them to e-mail their spouses, friends or kids in college. “We took a back-door approach and snuck it in,” Kersten says. “When technology is something personal and fun, people don’t fear it as much.”

Holy Family also offered a variety of computer-training opportunities for teachers. As the technology coordinator for the school, Kersten taught graduate-level courses that teachers could take for credit. Administrators encouraged teachers to attend technology conferences and seminars, which were paid for through the technology budget.

Teachers are the key to integrating technology in the classroom, says Kersten, so technology use has to be driven by them.

Teachers Are Key

At the Gary and Jerri-Ann Jacobs High Tech High School in San Diego, the tech staff agrees that teachers are essential to an effective technology program. This Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation model school, founded in 1999, bought a lot of technology equipment before hiring teachers, and some of the higher-end equipment was underutilized, reports Jed Wallace, chief operating officer of the charter school. Now, technology staff members visit the classrooms and collaborate with teachers to find out how they’d like to use technology.

“You can’t just throw technology at a teacher and say, ‘Here you are,’” says Peter Estacio, technology director.

At the high school, which has been around for four years, Estacio can introduce sophisticated software. But he sticks with the basics at the High Tech Middle School, which opened last fall, and will do the same at the High Tech Media Arts and High Tech International schools, which are due to open next fall.

“Keep it simple,” he advises. “Make sure the technology works and let teachers grow at their own pace.”

Estacio notes that just as each class has its own curricula, it also should have its own technology plan. So he has developed 36 plans for 36 teachers. Some are just getting started with Web sites, while others are using AutoCAD to design Maglev cars and human-powered go-carts for interdisciplinary projects.

Since so many High Tech High parents work in the IT industry, they’re a big help in the school, Estacio points out. For instance, two parents who are CAD/CAM (computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing) designers helped with the AutoCAD projects.

Because it’s a model school, educators often visit High Tech High. Some are surprised to find that the technology isn’t mind-blowing, but Estacio points out an important fact: All of the school’s technology is used to maximum capacity.

Ubiquitous Technology

Thanks to one passionate physics teacher who wrote grants to get computers into his classroom, Cincinnati Country Day School can trace its technology roots back to 1968. When the teacher died suddenly, the school continued his legacy.

Joe Hofmeister, the technology director, describes Cincinnati Country Day as a “conservative if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it school,” as opposed to some “wild-eyed technology-of-the-future kind of place.”

Nevertheless, because of the strong commitment from the faculty, parents, students and board members, Cincinnati Country Day is a leader in educational technology. Teachers from across the United States and Canada pay more than $500 each to attend technology conferences and seminars at the school.

In 1993, Charlie Clark, who was then the new headmaster, decided to make technology systemic in the school. He brought the technology staff and faculty together to create an educational technology plan. The plan was completed by December 1995. At its core was the idea that every student and teacher would have a notebook computer.

In 1996, after Clark attended a conference at Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., headquarters where officials from a school in Australia talked about their school’s one-to-one notebook program, he sold Cincinnati Country Day’s board on the idea. Within a month, the board helped him convince all the parents to buy notebooks for their children.

The school paid for the teachers’ notebooks, and it matched the percentage that students received in tuition assistance in order to help buy computers for students who were receiving financial aid. Whenever possible, however, the school encouraged parents to make an investment in the machines.

If parents couldn’t afford to buy them outright, the school offered them extended leases, Hofmeister says. “It’s a matter of priorities,” he explains. “People need to be invested.”

Next came the hard part: Integrating technology into the curriculum. Too often, schools either bolt technology onto the back of their curricula or ignore it altogether, he points out. Putting an educator in charge goes a long way toward integrating technology and education, says Hofmeister who, in addition to being the school’s technology director, is also the school newspaper’s advisor and a former math teacher.

In addition to the school’s notebook program, Cincinnati Country Day School instituted wireless computing in 2001. The school has 20 servers, plus videoconferencing equipment and phones equipped with Voice over Internet Protocol. Last September, it deployed 230 tablet computers.

“Part of our strategic plan is to remain on the cutting edge of technology,” Hofmeister says.

But that doesn’t mean that the school has a technology plan, per se, according to Hofmeister. Instead, it has an educational plan that uses technology to promote project-based learning. “It’s about what we draw out of students as opposed to what we pour into them,” he adds.

Hofmeister cringes at how much time schools put into developing airtight technology plans that can’t evolve with the curriculum or with the industry. “They have no idea how quickly these things change,” he warns. “Technology plans are only as good as they are flexible.”

The Devil Is in the Details

When it comes to fostering education, putting technology into place is just half the equation. Technology tools require maintenance and support, as Cincinnati Country Day discovered early on. Soon after students arrived on campus with their new notebooks, the devices started breaking at a rate of eight to 10 per day.

“We walked into that like a babe in the woods,” Hofmeister recalls.

In order to keep the notebook repairs from piling up, the school established a strong maintenance program with a quick turnaround. It also bought a loaner pool of computers for students and teachers to use while their notebooks were being repaired.

To streamline maintenance and support requirements, Hofmeister suggests keeping hardware and software as uniform as possible. Since the school has a four-year refresh cycle for computers—with students getting new notebooks in grades 5 and 9—it supports four different models at a time.

Though Cincinnati Country Day does not require strict uniformity of models, it does discourage, in the strongest terms, the purchase of any machine other than the one chosen by the school for a particular year. If a student does choose a different notebook, the school will not provide support. That approach enables the school staff to develop enough expertise to fix small problems immediately, while also allowing them to negotiate a strong maintenance program with the manufacturer for bigger problems.

Maintenance is just as critical to the success of technology plans at High Tech High School, says Estacio. If computers break, teachers can lose control of their classrooms, and that can lead to a loss of faith in technology.

A common mistake schools make when it comes to tech support is letting students repair the computers, Estacio adds. While the students may be bright and tech-savvy, most of them don’t have the necessary project management skills.

“They fix something, it breaks, then they move on because they’re kids,” he explains. Or, worse yet, they get so involved in fixing the computers that they forget about doing their homework.

Upgrading technology is another area often overlooked by schools, Hofmeister says. Even if computers are paid for through grants or gifts, he advises schools to build replacement costs into their budgets so they can get new machines as needed. Cincinnati Country Day tries to replace about a third of its computers every year instead of replacing them all at once, he says.

In order to have a solid, long-term technology program, schools must constantly sell their constituents on the concept, Hofmeister says. Since new parents, teachers and students come into the system every year, schools can’t assume that their technology initiatives will enjoy continued support. Schools can help keep the school community on board with the technology program with regular e-mails, articles in the school newspaper and presentations given at parent/teacher nights, he suggests.

Last but not least, Hofmeister stresses the need for a tireless network administrator and a strong, fast, reliable network—preferably wireless.

“Our network is a brick,” he says. “If our computers don’t operate, we don’t operate. It’s like electricity or water.”