by Jim Boyle
Editor
High school students across the Elk River Area School District will start school with a new directive upon settling into their classrooms.
Elk River High School senior Reece Byrne was among the first 100 high school students across the Elk River Area School District to get a Chromebook this week as part of a mass distribution to juniors and seniors.
Instead being asked to take out their notebook as generations before them have, they’ll now be asked to take out their Chromebook.
High school juniors and seniors started getting Chromebooks this past week. A new one-to-one, or one device per student, initiative allows each student to have the laptop computer as a learning tool. The Chromebooks will be used during the school day and after school in the comfort of their home, a coffee shop or elsewhere.
“Changes in school curriculum – from the tests the students take to the textbooks and supplements they use in class – are moving online,” District 728 manager of instructional technology Troy Anderson said. “Students need access to those materials in and out of the classroom. So giving a student access to his or her own Chromebook isn’t just about access to technology, it’s access to the materials they need for information and education.”
The Chromebook rollout is part of a $2.6 million technology levy approved by voters in the 2014 election. The computers will be distributed first to juniors and seniors throughout the district in 2015-2016, with freshman and sophomores getting machines next year. By the 2017-2018 school year, each student from grades six to 12 will have a Chromebook.
Such an effort has been on Anderson’s radar since he took the job as the district’s first head of instructional technology more than three years ago, but the one-to-one initiative wouldn’t be happening without the public’s support.
“The levy has given us the resources,” he said. “Without that we’d be struggling to do this.”
The technology initiative is one of the district’s priority strategies, part of the overall strategic plan. That strategy states District 728 will “refine educational delivery services to meet the needs of present and future learners so they achieve our mission and strategic objectives.”
New curriculum has been pushing the district. New curriculum adoptions no longer bring just textbooks. The textbooks are available online, but are much more dynamic.
A simple word within an online text might spawn a video, related imagery, a definition, an audio clip of how to say the word and more, from the click of one hyperlink. That’s only one example.
Anderson spent six years as an elementary school teacher before shifting his focus as an educator to technology. It was the third- and fourth-grade students who inspired him to make the transition. When he got his start in education, the World Wide Web was new on the educational scene. He would use it to find resources, but what he found amazing was when 8- and 9-year-old students would come to him with something they would like to show the whole class. They took to the technology rather easily.
As iPads and other devices have been rolled out over the past few years in the school district, that has been a constant finding.
Elk River High School English teacher Lisa Moe welcomes the roll out. For her, it will mean the days of her retrieving a computer cart for her English 9 classes are numbered. Having access to computers has also reduced the need to find and send additional teaching tools to an expensive copy center.
She says not everything done in class, however, will be done on computers.
“There’s still that balance to be struck with how much screen time,” she said, noting the students in her 12th-grade world literature class will still have a bulky textbook to take and home and read at night.
Machines will be updated on a three-year cycle to ensure technology is up-to-date districtwide.
Students will use Schoolology, an online course management system designed to improve communication between students and teachers and more classroom resources.
“The Chromebooks will add another dimension to learning,” Elk River High School Principal Terry Bizal said.
The high school principal said the infusion of technology is also coming with tech support that will help teachers roll out new strategies.
Juniors and seniors with the Chromebooks will access class calendars for assignment due dates, assignment notifications via email and cellphone, online quizzes and tests as well as online class discussions.
Students who get them will have an extra homework task, though. They will have to charge their machine at night and bring it back refreshed for another school day.