Dear Westborough Colleagues,
It’s been a busy and exciting fall for us and with some big student deployments wrapping up it feels like a big chunk of new student technology is transitioning from deployment to management, presenting a natural break-point to catch our breath, reflect back, and look forward.
Looking back we’ve made significant progress over the last 10 weeks:
- Teacher laptop deployments had been ongoing but slowed considerably over the past 4 weeks due to the focus on student tech. Back in August I said that new teachers would be a priority for getting laptops so as to avoid future migrations from desktops. However when school started we had to focus our efforts on new teachers who didn’t have a desktop, and those that did were directed to use it while they waited for a laptop. At this point there are no efficiency gains to prioritizing new teachers over their colleagues so we will no longer do so. I apologize for the miscommunication on this and I’m sorry for any disappointment that results, but remember that this is an ongoing project and we will get to all teachers and professional staff 0.5 FTE and greater.
- Teachers throughout the district are driving the innovation cycle by going out and seeking new ideas and tools, bringing them back to their teams to evaluate and design effective uses, and incorporating them into our practices through workshops.
- At the high school, the new Chromebooks have been in use since late September and the BYOD pilot is underway. Several teachers have had those students with a qualifying device bring it in and use it successfully in class, and participating students are enthusiastic about using their owns devices.
- At Gibbons, the 8th graders have been using their 1:1 chromebooks for a couple of weeks and are on track to start taking them home in early December.
- At Mill Pond, the students have been working on digital citizenship so they can receive their iPad licenses. We’ve completed the parent orientations and device distribution sessions and are doing the final cleanup required to get all of our grade 6 students up and running with their iPads. We expect that teachers and students can start trying them out by mid November. The iPad carts for the 4th and 5th grade teams are mostly ready but still need apps and should be ready by December.
- In the PK-3 schools, the iPad carts are ready and have installed on them the foundational creation and workflow apps teachers and students will need to get started. Students have been learning about and with the iPads as they work towards getting their licenses. There have been iPad workshops going on after school, during our early release/extended time, and during the PD day on Tuesday. We’re seeing more excitement about the possibilities and opportunities and teachers are asking about checking out the carts outside of their normally scheduled times.
- We’re continuing to learn our pieces of Powerschool and getting more fluent and able to dive deeper into its features as we work through grades, report cards, transcripts, and state reporting. We have successfully certified our first SIMS and are starting to tackle EPIMS and SCS.
Looking ahead we see much to do, much to learn, and much to be excited about as these initiatives unlock opportunities in our classrooms. Here are some important points as we start taking advantage of our new classroom technology opportunities:
- Teacher innovation, collaboration, and leadership will continue to play a critical role in growing how our students use technology to learn.
- In our parent orientation sessions at Mill Pond we’ve been stressing the need for patience as we learn together, and patience will be in order for students, staff, teachers, and administrators as well.
- As we transition from deployment to management, those of us on the tech team will need a little time to catch our breath and catch up on things that we’ve had to put aside such as teacher laptops and tech projects for specific programs.
- As the newly deployed student tech ramps up we’re expecting to see an increase in requests for iPad apps, Chrome apps, and Chrome extensions. We’ll need time to scale up our app selection and deployment processes and since we can’t do everything at once we’ll need to focus our efforts strategically as follows:
- Organization and workflow apps for grade 6 1:1 iPads (November)
- Apps and extensions for grade 8 chromebooks for when they go home (November)
- Creation and workflow apps for grade 4 & 5 iPads (November/December)
- Additional apps for PK-3 iPad carts (January)
We’re just getting started on this new chapter and it’s exciting to see the possibilities. While there may have a natural desire to race ahead at full speed, there’s a lot to do and a lot to learn, so let’s take it slowly and make sure we learn to crawl and then walk before we start running.
Sincerely,
-Jon Green
