The National Education Technology Plan places a large emphasis on a variety of things when
it comes to infrastructure.
It's not just having high speed broadband Internet access.
It's having high speed access for the entire community.
So while they have this technology at school, once they leave school if they don't have
a way of getting on the Internet at home it doesn't help.
Now, there are answers out there like the library and that kind of a thing but the library
is not always open or the student might be doing homework late at night.
So there are districts that are doing some creative things.
This community is a very high tech community and has embraced the idea of being a technology
leader in the school district.
I hear people talking about our schools and our technology focus in the community and
the pride factor.
We have also recently begun an initiative, we're a little over a year into a community
wide Wi-Fi project to allow our community to have lots and lots of free public Wi-Fi
to benefit students but also to benefit anybody in the community who needs Wi-Fi.
We have started in neighborhoods of poverty first in purpose and we're moving across the
city installing as much free public Wi-Fi as possible and it is a cooperative team effort
between the school district and the city of Council Bluffs and lots of other organizations
who have helped.
So it's really a community that has embraced the idea of being a tech leader because the
people here are proud of what we have done in school and in the city and in the community
in general.
In addition to kind of this high speed connectivity we also want to make sure that we have all
of the devices in place and that we can sustain them because there's a lot of devices that
are coming into the schools.
It's not just what the schools are buying or purchasing, it's also students are bringing
in their own devices, teachers have their own devices.
So you want to make sure that the infrastructure physically can just support that.
Another piece of it is just kind of creative long-term budgeting and making sure that you
can afford to sustain the vision that you have.
A large piece is digital citizenship, making sure that students understand digital etiquette,
making sure that devices that are used in the schools are safe and secure and students
understand what that is, that you're in line with federal laws.
So infrastructure stretches out to mean a lot of different pieces coming together to
make these devices successful in the classrooms.
One-to-one school districts are all kids here in our district K-12 are issued a one-to-one
devices, iPads at the K-5, 6th through 12th grade have the MacBook Airs.
That provides a piece of equity that all students are on a level playing field.
I think one of the big things that we did this year is we did a technology refresh so
we all got new devices.
It had been three years since the other devices were in place and it was time to upgrade.
I think that is a big piece and making sure that we're planning financially for that to
occur.
And then the training piece for teachers because even though the device is the same device
there are more capabilities with the newer versions and making sure that the teachers
are aware of those and always giving them time to explore.
It's hard, technology is expensive and making sure that we have the funds in place to support
that was one of the key pieces that we had to have in place before we proceeded.
Every school district struggles with how do I fund it and where is that money going to
come from and what else do I have to cut to make this happen?
I think one of the main things that we've done here at Howard Winn is we are not big
on textbook adoption, we do not go out and purchase a lot of curriculum.
There is so much stuff on the Internet that is free or at very little charge that the
teachers have really gone out and pursued those things that meet Iowa core and that
they can adapt to use as teaching resources in their classroom.
So that is a lot of funds that we have saved just by utilizing the devices that we have.
We've got an appropriate use policy that we need to communicate, have people check off
on, hold them accountable to that.
That's a piece of it.
We have very few things blocked here at the school.
We try to, I guess we try to take those approaches at an individual basis with different students
on that.
Often times I wonder should we put the clamps on things a little more?
But the reality is when they leave here for college or career that things are wide open
and some kids need a little more coaching on that than others but that's what we're
here for too is teach those soft skills to help them be employable and to be productive
after they leave here.
It really is a system and there's a lot of moving pieces to it and there's a lot of things
that need to be going right to make it all work.