The program, Pioneers Achieving and Connecting with Technology, or PACT, enables a one device to one student ratio for first through 12th grade.
SPS Technology Director Bryan Bloomer and Secondary Technology Integration Specialist Emily Harris presented an update of the program to the Board of Education recently.
"We have fully implemented the one to one initiative this school year," Harris said. "The conversation started with the Board of Education in 2020. Then it came up again with the bond committee as the bond committee was looking at what we needed within our district. They emphasized the need for more technology, and they really wanted us to look at moving towards a one to one."
To do that, the technology department inventoried the current equipment SPS already had, the number of Chromebooks in the district and the roll-off (service) dates for those.
The department decided that the district had enough Chromebooks to implement the program due to devices purchased during COVID-19.
Bryan Bloomer took position as the new technology director for SPS in July. Since then, his team has been busy.
Bloomer formerly worked in Oklahoma City Public schools as a technician in 2015. In 2020, he became a technology coordinator and project manager, where he planned, implemented and managed a 1:1 technology program. He moved to the SPS district in 2022 to become the assistant technology director.
The benefits to the program, he said, include helping students take ownership of their learning outside of the classroom, preparing them for college and career readiness, getting them distance-learning ready if moving to virtual learning becomes necessary and providing equitable access to learning opportunities for all students.
Upcoming tech goals
Bloomer and Harris outlined the project goals for the program, the first of which is to achieve sustainability over multiple years.
"We looked at our existing Chromebooks population and we aligned existing life cycle of the device to grade bands," Bloomer said. "So that means if you're an incoming senior, you've got one more year of school with us at SPS, you get a device that's generally got one year of life left, and that way it can be rolled off, it can be surplussed at the end of that."
The advantage of sustainability is that 10th-graders can keep their device year-to-year and not have to have huge logistical shifts, he said. The plan also avoids district-wide, costly refreshes, but staggering the device end of life schedule. This also works well with the current bond budget.
The second goal is to reduce costs by planning on a five-year life cycle. Previously, Chromebooks only had a 4-year life cycle.
"Google has heard the outcry of public school districts around the country during COVID-19, and said, 'Hey, this is pretty wasteful to have this device that's still good and only get rid of (it) in four years,'" Bloomer said.
Google also extended its Auto Update Expiration dates — security updates that Google pledged to provide for hardware to keep it up-to-date. SPS extended that to a year with self-service.
Another goal is to simplify inventory by keeping Chromebooks at the same site for duration of their life cycle.
"Students don't have to be responsible if they change schools to move a Chromebook from site to site," Bloomer said. "It all stays within the building, and yet within the building, those students get to keep that device year to year as they progress through the grades in that building."
The fourth goal the team hopes to complete is to enhance student experience by providing Chromebooks with larger, high-resolution screens.
One of the things Bloomer said he's proud about with the new plan — and one of the things that he feels differentiates Stillwater — is that the majority of school districts chose low costs options with 11-inch screens, after COVID-19 hit. Most schools chose whatever was cheapest, smallest and easiest to carry.
Bloomer said data has matured, and the International Journal of Education, Teaching and Learning conducted a study after 2020 that showed how cognitive retention and engagement increased across the board if students were given a bigger screen to work with.
"We want to move away from an 11-inch screen, and ideally, we want to standardize around a 14-inch screen, if at all possible," Bloomer said.
SPS has larger screens at the high school currently, and is working to filter those down to lower grades.
The technology team also wants to provide school instructional staff with devices matched or exceeding the device capabilities of their students.
This would provide greater parity and understanding of student experience by the teacher because they are on the same device, and it would allow teachers to troubleshoot student Chromebook issues more effectively.
"We wanted teachers to be able to relate to the devices their students were using," Harris said. "If you don't commonly use a Chromebook, they're a little bit different than a regular PC, and you just don't know how to work with it as well as what the students need if you're not using one yourself."
Further highlights
The team reduced hotspot footprints by transitioning from Verizon and T-mobile to Kajeet, which will allow flexibility to switch out providers as needed for students working at home. They also looked at factors like socio-economic status of students along with access to WiFi at home to fine-tune their hotspots.
Rollouts of the new program included implementing Incident IQ, a ticketing system which focuses on media specialists and the checkout process, as well as ticketing options for Technology and Education Services.
The SPS Technology Department prepped and redistributed more than 7,000 Chromebooks over the summer.
"They collected them, they prepped them and then they redistributed to all of the school sites, and that was a huge undertaking to complete and do over the summer," Harris said.
The department implemented GoGuardian training for all teachers and held training for all secondary sites.
"Helping the teachers learn how to manage the devices in the classroom has been a big priority," Harris said.
The technology department is looking into issues such as docking stations for teachers at school sites; students not bringing Chromebooks that are charged for use; confusion over the checkout process among staff; a desire for greater communication from Technology and Education Services to the sites; and continuing education to staff and community about the filtering layers used at SPS.
Moving forward, the technology team plans to better identify students who lack access to the internet at home, to hold parent orientation for incoming sixth-graders, implement charging and docking stations at secondary sites and continue to evaluate and implement education technology tools that help students access technology in and out of the classroom.
"There's a learning curve," Bloomer said. "You get better every year, the students get better every year, the expectations become clearer year-by-year. But I'm very confident with the team we have, that we'll move to address any of those issues and really kind of leverage this access to technology and prepare our students, make them better digital citizens overall. I'm excited about it."
© 2023 the Stillwater NewsPress (Stillwater, Okla.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
