NE Dubois gets high tech
Story and photos by Eric Tretter, Ferdinand News
Students at Northeast Dubois will be the first in the county to each receive an iPad as a tool to enhance the learning process.
The school corporation decided to make the leap after students were polled last autumn, simply asking, “What do you guys need?”
Northeast Dubois Superintendent Bill Hochgesang is adamant about providing the very best opportunities for students. He cites the democratic poll as what got the ball rolling.
“It started off as a process of how do we improve, how do we get better, what do our kids need,” explains Hochgesang. “Technology is a big thing for children. It’s the way they live. As a school we need to change to meet their needs, that’s kind of where it all started.”
In response, Jeep administrators turned to other schools that had already adopted similar devices in the classroom. They talked to some (Vincennes and South Spencer) and ultimately visited North Central School Corporation in Farmersburg to see what they had and why they chose it, wanting to know what went well and what didn’t.
Feedback concluded with one common criteria: if you really want to be successful, you need a technology integrations specialist. Enter Shanna Steckler, Business Tech Lab I, Personal Finance, Business Foundations, Computer Applications and now the school’s Technology Integrations Specialist.
Steckler is charged with providing support throughout the entire school corporation. A three year plan, starting next fall, will introduce grades 7-12 to their own iPads. The following year (2014-15) grades 5-12 will receive theirs and finally, K-12 in 2015-16. Though she will provide technical support, problem solving and even some repair, much of Steckler’s focus will be finding the right applications or ‘Apps’ to complement the machines and integrate not only students but teachers to this new (to the school system and classroom) learning tool.
Teachers received iPads in December to begin familiarizing themselves and to know what they want to explore for next year’s curriculum.
A technology committee will decide which apps work best for what applications and every iPad will include apps for word processing, presentation software, a PDF reader, et cetera to aid everyday classroom work. Also, the App Store is open to all students age 13 and over. The machines will utilize MyBigCampus, whose slogan: “A safe social learning platform,” says much about this social network and learning management system that is safe for k-12.
“I think every school will go one to one with some type of technology in the near future … They can check email, read a book, read the newspaper on it,” notes Steckler. “All of that is accessible to them – that’s where we can utilize more things that are free and out there that we can’t currently use because we don’t have computer access for all of our kids at one time.”
Essentially, it is really not about what these iPads will do but the nearly unlimited tools and resources they can and will supply to every student who wishes to utilize them.
“It’s not about just exchanging information, it’s about exploring and going further than we ever thought of going,” says Hochgesang of the tools his students will possess both in school and in their not-so-distant futures. “I compare it to a coach coaching a team. We want the players to be better players than we ever were [as a coach] so that is what we’d want as teachers – the students to go further than we ever could go with our learning.”
The transition may be no small one and both Hochgesang and Steckler can only begin to guess the hiccups that may arise and unanswered questions that will come along with the process. How will they hold up? Will the school’s bandwidth support everyone logging on at the same time? And of course, what about funding?
Yet the school’s superintendent takes it all in stride. “There’ll be a lot of mistakes and problems along the way that we’ll deal with …[and] as long as funding goes to our kids, that’s all that matters, that’s where it is supposed to go.”
He adds that protective cases will be provided along with insurance policies and a hope the kids will take care of their new and exciting tools. Also, after handing over iPads come summer, students will receive/be assigned the same device next school year giving extra incentive to care for their device throughout their school career. Furthermore, the school has offered bring-your-own technology for the last few years.
“We listen to our students and try to fit their needs,” adds Hochgesang. “That’s what I want people to think of this, we wanted to put our students first. School isn’t about kids fitting our dynamic, it’s about us meeting their needs – it’s changing a paradigm.”
