Technology & Learning - April 2008 - (Page 42)

would still be needed. Slayman says the key to garnering support was through informing the public of their goals and through what she calls the “big deal”—allowing county residents to buy technology at district costs. Once local funding was secured, Kershaw contracted with HewlettPackard, signing four concurrent leases, each for about $2 million. Getting one-to-one to work isn’t easy. Here’s how one district was able to do it. By Tom McHale ershaw County School District may not be the first place that comes to mind when thinking about hotbeds of ed-tech innovation. It’s 726 square miles, southeast of Charlotte in central South Carolina, and encompasses Camden City, its suburbs, and the rural Bethune–North Central area. Its student population is diverse and for the most part not wealthy: Camden High School is urban with 1,055 students, 45 percent of whom qualify for reduced lunch; Lugoff-Elgin High School is a large suburban high school with 1,482 students, with 31 percent reduced lunch; North Central High School is a small rural school (570 students), and the poorest of the three, with 62 percent of the students qualifying for the federal reduced lunch program. As the district looked to upgrade 42 | www.techlearning.com K its antiquated computer hardware, then-Superintendent Herbert Berg presented one-to-one as a solution. And thus the iCan Project began. After determining it would need $8 million to fund the Kershaw County program for the three high schools, the district worked on finding ways to somehow make this a possibility. “We didn’t have $2 million a year to put into technology,” says Agnes Slayman, an assistant superintendent. But by standardizing their resources, school officials found they could save considerable money already allocated. The 20 schools in the district were operating independently in many ways. Because school administrators were able to save enough by unifying the district’s technology usage and tapping into state funds, they were able to get close to their goal. But some local taxpayer support Taking the plunge In January 2005, more than 800 9th grade students were issued Compaq notebooks (HP Nx5000). Teachers began to implement the lesson plans and training they learned, but there were issues that arose. Slayman says they were too altruistic, believing students would use the new tools solely for educational purposes. Instant messaging soon became a distraction and was blocked. They provided teachers further help with classroom management when they installed Smart Technologies’ SynchronEyes, software that allows teachers to view and control any student’s laptop screen. Teachers can use this product to broadcast what’s on their screen, or any student’s screen, to the projector or directly to laptops. Bandwidth also became an issue. When the second group of 9th graders was issued laptops in the fall of 2005, and teachers implemented more Web-based content, the district experienced slowdowns—there was even a point when the Internet just stopped working. After troubleshooting, they applied to the state’s Budget and Control Board (which oversees the K–12 network) for additional bandwidth. Slayman discovered, though, “in South Carolina you can’t just request additional bandwidth, you have to prove that you have problems,” she says. So she sent an e-mail to everyone in the district to turn on his and her computers and connect to the Internet—causing the district Web site to crash. The district’s 9MB http://www.techlearning.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Technology & Learning - April 2008

Technology & Learning - April 2008 Contents New @ techlearning.com Editor's Desk News and Trends Digital Age Assessment: Part 2 Anytime, Anywhere Learning Caught on Video Cover Story: Plan and Deliver Cutting Edge in Carolina Product Guide Reviews Best of the Blogs What's New LOY Profile Series

Technology & Learning - April 2008

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