Education Week - June 4, 2020 - 17

education for the better simply because you've done
that."
In the San Antonio district, officials are hoping to recoup the $6.1 million cost of its acquisition of 30,000
laptops by floating a bond election in November. To
reach 1-to-1 computing across all grade levels, the district purchased 30,000 laptops in mid-March to accompany 25,000 devices already on hand.
Patti Salzmann, the district's chief academic officer,
said some changes on the horizon to better accommodate the devices include likely acquiring a learning management system for the entire district. Currently, teachers are using Google Classroom as a central hub, and
while free and convenient, Salzmann said the district
can't extract all the useful student data it needs from
Google Classroom.
"We don't know the quality of the interaction," she said.
"With an LMS, we can monitor information other than
whether you logged in and what your grade is."
Professional development will also be fine-tuned to incorporate digital learning more, she said. Teachers are
already offered a "robust" digital program that includes
tools such as Screencastify and NearPod, but Salzmann
said "going forward there would be an emphasis on ensuring that is naturally integrated 100 percent into" training.
District-issued laptops will stay with students at least
through the summer, so they can tap into different programs, including an online portal to interact with classmates and engage in academic exercises that will change
weekly until the new school year starts. Once the laptops
return to school, Salzmann said they'll be used plenty, but
there will be a balance between screen time and face-toface interaction between student and teacher.
"The idea that children are coming to school and sitting on a computer all day isn't something anybody wants
either," she said.

'We Just Need More Time'
In Detroit, where the school district is receiving
50,000 tablet-style laptops with internet connectivity
in June as a gift from a coalition of business leaders and
nonprofits, the approach to incorporating those devices
into every classroom is going to be much more "method-

ical," said Superintendent Nikolai Vitti.
Vitti said some of his teachers are so far behind the digital teaching curve that it won't be until the 2021-22 school
year when district-wide curriculum plans are tailored specifically toward the fleet of new devices. And Vitti emphasized it's not just the teachers who can use the extra
time learning how to use the devices effectively: "I'm a
little skeptical that all our students are comfortable in the
space of online learning."
"We just need more time. There's so much happening now. Stress is high. Trauma is high," he said, noting that Detroit has been a hot spot for COVID-19 cases
and when in-person classes resume teachers are likely
to be worried about exposure, let alone changing their
entire teaching approach. "We'd have resistance only
because we didn't plan and train enough. This is more
methodical, more strategic, and more sensitive to where
our teaching staff is."
When Vitti arrived three years ago at the Detroit public
schools, a district where up to 90 percent of its roughly
51,000 students do not have access to a laptop or internet
at home, there was just one device available in school for
every six students. A cohesive plan for buying and using
tech at schools did not exist.
Since then, Detroit has bought 30,000 laptops, Vitti
said, and was on pace to be 1-to-1 at K-8 by the end of
this school year. Moving forward, the idea, he said, was
to start investing in laptops for high school students. But
then coronavirus upended those plans, and the 50,000
new devices will bring the district to a complete 1-to-1
computing ratio much quicker.
Up until now, the district had used its laptops to mostly
supplement core instruction for reading and math only.
The devices were tied to carts. Once the new batch arrives in the summer, Vitti said, they will be the "property
of the families, not ours" and students can use them as
their main device at home.
Starting in the fall, every student will carry a laptop daily,
but the district's core curriculum won't be integrated with
the devices until the following
school year. That's when the
district can start implementing a broader shift to incorporate tech tools such as

NATIONAL SURVEY DATA
Does your school have
at least one device
for every student
(1:1 computing)?

59%
Yes

*Results show responses
from teachers.

SOURCE: EdWeek Research
Center survey, 2020

Education Week - June 4, 2020

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