AKRON – Over the summer, Tippecanoe Valley School Corp. Technology Director Brad Hagg and his department made upgrades to technology at each of the four Valley schools.
Monday night, Hagg reported about the changes to the school board.
“It was a pretty rapid period of change,” Hagg said.
At Akron Elementary, Hagg said they had the opportunity to convert a conventional classroom into a second computer lab. With the new Common Core Standards test coming, which will be completely digital, the school needed a second computer lab. A second lab also allows Akron to get all students tested in the morning, which is peak test time.
Since Valley replaced the computers at the Burket Educational Center, the old computers at Burket moved to Akron’s second computer lab. Those Burket computers are still good, Hagg said. D&D Electrical ran the poles for Valley, he said, and Dave Swanson pulled all the cables himself. The cost to wire up all the work stations was less than $7,000, which allowed Valley to add the second computer lab at Akron.
At Burket, all 37 computer stations were replaced. Hagg said they were able to purchase refurbished machines for Burket, saving about $300 per machine and still procuring a five-year warranty on them.
Teacher and office work stations were replaced at Mentone. Hagg said they replaced the computers in the secondary (grades 3-5) computer lab and put them in the primary computer lab. The computers from the primary computer lab will be sold to the community.
By purchasing and using refurbished computers, Hagg said they saved money.
Also at Mentone, a building-wide wireless network was installed. Valley employees did all the work, so money was saved there.
Mentone Elementary now has complete coverage with a good signal strength everyone in the building, Hagg said. If you walk through the building with a mobile device, it passes through seamlessly from one access point to another without notice.
“It’s really neat the way it works,” Hagg said.
He said he also can see who’s attached to the access points and what websites they are looking at. It was done cost effectively, he said, by installing it themselves.
iPad2s were purchased for all teachers, and two iPad2 carts for students. Each cart has 30 iPad2s on them.
Teachers can download applications one time and sync the application to all the iPad2s.
“The amazing thing is the amount of applications available out there for free for teachers,” said Hagg.
School Board President Mark Wise asked if there will be training for teachers on the technology. Hagg said there would be, but the teachers need to take the initiative to get the training. He also said the technology is really easy.
“Anyone can do it,” he said.
Six sets of classroom response units also were purchased. There is one for every grade level to share. Students use controllers to type in their answers, and teachers can give 10-question quizzes to their students. At the end, it tabulates the results to let teachers know how well their students are faring.
Hagg also talked about Smart Boards and the software being made available to teachers. The iPad2 will allow teachers to take over their classroom computer and run them while walking around the classroom.
This summer, Valley also deployed a very cost-effective document camera for every teacher in the district, Hagg said. The nice thing is, he said, it can function as a web cam, too, so that teachers and classrooms can Skype with it, having video conferences with anyone around the world.
For the middle school, the heating and air conditioning in the district server room was addressed. The room had been running 80 to 90 degrees.
“I was shocked we haven’t had any equipment failure,” Hagg said.
Fixing the room ended up being very cost effective at $4,000, Hagg said, by putting the room on its own system. That work is being completed now.
Hagg said they also decided to make the high school wireless. The school will be entirely wireless in the next six weeks.
Districtwide, Hagg said, they knew they needed to upgrade the email and Internet filtering, which is being done now. They also determined the firewall was very old so that was replaced. With the replacement, the Internet access speed has gone through the roof, he said.
“I think we are pretty well protected with that device,” Hagg said.
They also are working on replacing file serves, which may go into the fall, he said.
Hagg concluded his report by talking about the future of technology and education. He said teachers’ roles may change to being a more collaborative role with students with all the technology out there. Teachers will become more of a partner in education. They will be an enabler in the classroom, but students will have to step up and help direct their education. The administration also will have to play a part in determining how to keep up with the changes in technology.
Superintendent Brett Boggs thanked Hagg for all his hard work and leadership. He said Hagg gets the educational aspect of technology and talks a lot with the administration team.
“With his direction,” Boggs said, “he is heading us in the right direction.”
