Editor’s Note: This is the fourth part of a six-part series looking at the use of technology in education.
So much technology exists today that can do so much, but schools can’t afford all of it.
So when it comes to technology and budgeting, everything must be carefully evaluated.
To save on costs, Tippecanoe Valley School Corp. will buy refurbished computers when it comes time to update its computers, according to Valley’s director of technology, Brad Hagg. They still have four-year warranties, and they save a lot of money.
When Valley tackles big projects, it does the things most critical to its schools.
Hagg said most of the funding for technology comes from the district’s Capital Projects Fund. Every summer, the school board reviews the fund.
Occasionally, Hagg said, they get grants from foundations, but with the tight economy, foundations are giving less for technology unless there’s a unique project. When received, grants help out a lot because they can free up funds in the CPF.
There’s a list of current maintenance agreements to keep software and equipment up-to-date and in working order, according to Warsaw Community Schools Chief Technology Officer Elaine Bultemeier. Those are fixed costs. Salaries and benefits are fixed costs.
“We try to meet with every administrator in the system and try to determine what each building’s needs are, but we try to provide equity among the buildings,” Bultemeier said. “It’s a challenge because each building might be at a different refresh rate.”
Each of the school buildings at Valley is “refreshed” every four years, Hagg said. Mentone Elementary got updated in 2011, and will get it again in 2015.
One of the things Bultemeier’s technology department does is offer an opportunity to teachers to make requests through mini-grants. Teachers answer a series of questions, and a committee evaluates the requests. Bultemeier is not on the committee.
If the request is granted, teachers get the funding to experiment and see if there’s potential for the technology. Usually, if the educator makes it through the process, they are pretty interested in the technology.
Last year was the first year for the technology mini-grants.
Schools aren’t the only ones faced with the cost of technology as students must have access to it.
“Sometimes we make assumptions of what people have or don’t have because of socio-economic status,” Bultemeier said. “But you would be surprised at what people have in their homes.”
A Project Tomorrow Speak Up national survey, taken last year, found that 80 percent of Lakeview Middle School students answered “yes” to if they had broadband access at home.
“I don’t think teachers would purposely assign homework where the only way to complete it would be to get on the computer at home,” Bultemeier said.
She said teachers provide time at school for students to use computers, but Bultemeier was really impressed with what the national survey found.
“I had made my own mind up, but I was pleasantly surprised,” Bultemeier said.
“I don’t think for our area, being so rural, we have a handle on how much access our students have,” Hagg said.
When the national survey comes out this year, Hagg said he will be really interested to see what it show.
“I think students have more access than we think that they do,” he said.
Students’ access to the Internet is probably more mobile based, as many cell phones and portable devices have it. He said home computer access it probably not as well as he’d like to see, but this generation of students probably has a better handle on mobile access.
“I think there’s still a divide, not economically but where students live,” Hagg said. “Warsaw probably has more choices for broadband. Out here, there is less choice and the cost is higher. As a country, we need to address that.
“Hopefully, companies will continue to make investments in that area,” Hagg continued. “I hope the government will encourage companies to invest in those areas. That’s the divide in my mind – access to it. You see it in Indiana more than anywhere else because of the big divide of rural and urban areas.”
