It has been a year since my last posting and I can report that the items my department planned to implement have been, or will be, implemented according to plan.
One of the more visible indications of technology and public relations progress has to be the introduction of a totally revamped district website. Borrowing design elements from some of the most heavily visited technology websites on the Internet, we achieved our goal of a less cluttered appearance, and that translates into making the information you are looking for easier to find.
Since 2007, our vision has been to improve access to technology, integrate technology across the curriculum, and to assist teachers and engage students with classroom projection and sound field systems.
This year will deliver mobility and high speed 802.11n wireless Internet access to Holmdel faculty and students at all three campuses. Anyone with a Holmdel network account will be able to bring in their personally owned devices and gain filtered access to Internet. W.R. Satz and the High School are currently up and running and Indian Hill and Village will be completed later this summer in time for the 2012-2013 school year.
In partnership with my department, the administration and the staff will evaluate future touch interface aware operating systems and applications and the use of tablet devices in order to lower technology costs, and to improve access, as well as outcomes.
The creation of a catalog of internally developed technology related courses for our staff was developed over the last year and the offerings continue to grow. These courses are delivered throughout the year with advanced workshops occurring before and after school or during the summer.
For the students, we a have added a part-time technology coach, who is shared between Village and Indian Hill Schools and we also added three weeks of PC-related technology curriculum and assessment in 7th and 8th grades as part of a cycle course. We are also using Study Island as a formative assessment tool in grades 3-8 as a replacement for Learnia.
Something I will be focused on, and you will be hearing more about, is the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), which is the next-generation of assessment in Math and Language Arts/Literacy. It is scheduled to take effect during the 2014-2015 school year. One unique aspect to this assessment is that at least part of it will be conducted online. This could greatly impact technology planning and funding requirements.
