These Lesser Known Educational Technologies Remain Vital to Learning

Screen-Sharing Tool Allows Teachers to Direct Collaboration with Ease

The problem Parkland wanted to solve, Renna says, was how to personalize learning for students without pulling teachers in too many directions to be effective: “How do we clear the brush for teachers and make it as easy as possible for them to personalize learning for students and amplify student agency in the classroom?”

For that, Parkland administrators chose Airtame, a wireless screen-sharing and collaboration solution that they introduced in the high school and, shortly after, implemented districtwide. The technology, Renna says, enables teachers to work more collaboratively with students instead of being tied to the front of a classroom by a cord or cable. This can be particularly beneficial for students who might need extra assistance to keep pace.

“Learning should be driven by the students whenever possible,” Renna says. “There should be the ability for students to work on things at their own speed.

The teacher can be like a maestro, in a sense, keeping things moving for one group while having a sidebar with another.”

RELATED: Schools prioritize mobile and flexible technology for anytime, anywhere learning.

Charging Carts Keep Student Devices Always Ready

Even the most talented, multitasking master of a teacher can’t prevent kids from doing what comes naturally: breaking, losing or forgetting things, particularly device chargers. A laptop without a charged battery is just a brick.

With the proliferation of one-to-one device programs in recent years, K–12 district technology teams have had an influx of IT assets to tag, track, update and maintain. It’s no easy feat, particularly for large districts like the School District of Palm Beach County, the 10th largest public school district in the U.S. and the fifth largest in Florida. It’s also why this district invested in Ergotron charging carts to protect, service and store student devices.

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For Seth Moldovan, principal at Palm Beach County’s Blue Lake Elementary School, the benefits have been clear.

“Having these charging carts in everyone’s classroom allows us to easily move them all over campus,” Moldovan says. “So, if we’re doing a project in the robotics lab, we just unplug a charging cart, take it to the robotics lab from our media center, and the kids have the access right there. Then, the kids put their devices right back in, and the updates come automatically. The computers are always ready, it takes up less space, and you don’t have to worry about them not charging overnight.”

Enhanced Audio Helps Hearing-Impaired Students in Noisy Classrooms

About two or three of every 1,000 children in the U.S. are born with some level of hearing loss, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. 

Meanwhile, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 3 percent of U.S. children have some degree of vision impairment. In a K–12 landscape where there is an increasing emphasis on interactive and visual learning, this presents educators with a compelling challenge. How can they ensure the same quality of learning for students with vison or hearing impairments?

At Blue Lake Elementary School, the district invested in a wealth of audiovisual supports to ensure all students have equal access to the learning materials and knowledge resources necessary for a meaningful, effective education. Every classroom has Audio Enhancement speaker systems and flat-panel touch-screen monitors. The district also invested in Audio Enhancement’s EPIC System for paging and intercom announcements.

“One of the biggest things we’ve invested in are audio enhancements,” Moldovan says. “Our teachers have the speaker system, but also a microphone so that every child can hear.”

LEARN MORE: Why school leaders shouldn't overlook audio technology.

Upgrading to CAT 8 Meets Students’ Current and Future Needs

Of course, all of these investments are for naught if the infrastructure can’t keep up with the heightened demand for speed, agility and accuracy. This is where investing in high-quality Ethernet cabling becomes critical.

At Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School in Northampton, Mass., that level of reliability, efficiency and speed is particularly helpful, says Technology Director Joshua Shearer.

In addition to traditional academic coursework, Shearer explains, Smith Vocational is home to a fully operational farm and 15 industry-specific programs, such as automotive repair, carpentry, cosmetology and plumbing. Each of these programs has its own unique requirements for the software and other technology it supports, including computer-aided design software and, for the criminal justice students, a 911 simulator.

READ MORE: Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School turns to tech for operational efficiencies.

With so many diverse technology needs, Shearer says, it was critical that the school have the infrastructure in place to keep everything running smoothly and reliably. So, when the time came to upgrade its CAT 5 cabling, Shearer and his colleagues decided to prioritize a future-focused, more-is-more approach for the school, ultimately investing in CAT 8.

The new cabling provides more bandwidth than the school needs for now, he says, “but you never know, with how technology keeps growing. I'd hate to have to rip out cables and go back to redoing everything. Better to invest in more than you need up front and then not have to invest in something different later.”

That kind of forward thinking will ensure schools and districts procure technology that fulfills its purpose well into the future, says Claudia Newman-Martin, a partner at Boston Consulting Group. “How will the technology change school practices on a daily basis? A deep understanding of the end user — and the job that the end user needs the technology to do — is essential to make sure you’re procuring the right hardware to support that job.”

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