District maps out tech goals for next three years
BY CHRIS GAETANO
Staff Writer

SOUTH BRUNSWICK - Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Joanne Kerekes presented version 2.0 of the district's technology integration plan during the Board of Education's regular Monday meeting.

The plan is meant to cover three years, with the previous one having completed itself this year after its start in 2004. Kerekes said that the current cycle will keep what she called "the digital native" - people who are familiar with computers and have grown up around them - in mind. This builds on what Kerekes sees as successes in the purpose of the last technology plan, which was mostly to get staff members up-to-speed on new technologies that students take for granted.

"In 2004, we were still trying to figure out how to get our staff to be conversant with e-mail; we were still putting things out largely on paper, and getting people to check e-mail in a responsible manner was difficult. I think three years later we are in a comfortable place," said Kerekes.

Over the previous three years, Kerekes said that the district met and exceeded all its technology goals. Examples included training staff in the use of e-mail and other Internet tools. She said that in a survey sent out to district employees, 80 to 90 percent said that they felt they were at intermediate proficiency tech use. Others included the implementation of the online Friday folder programs, the ID badge system and the student information system.

She said that the focus for the next three years will primarily be in integrating technology with the curriculum and expanding the scope of other initiatives to include online usage. For example, she noted that the Safe and Caring Schools initiative, which includes things such as character education, will also heavily refine its cyber-safety education to educate students on how to deal with potential threats on the Internet. She said that one way this is integrated with character education is the acceptable-use policies that students sign for access to the computers that make them pledge to not set out to harm people through those same computers.

"Cyber safety was just a footnote in 2004," said Kerekes.

Another example of integration brought up was that students will eventually post their work on the Internet to be peer reviewed and critiqued.

In order to assess the plan's progress, there will be an annual meeting of about 30 stakeholders that will include students, faculty, parents, administration, police and township representatives. The first phase of the three-year plan has already been put before the group of 30.

The first year of the technology plan, which has $350,000 in funding in this year's budget, is very concrete, and specific plans for the next two years are a little more ambiguous to account for new and developing technologies. Still, some concrete plans that the district plans to pursue include taking the Viking Television Network entirely digital, eventually phasing out tapes entirely, integrating all the schools into the same phone system, replacing the laptops in the mobile computer labs (where the computers are brought to the classrooms) and upgrading the computers in three of the high school's labs. The computers will be purchased for $350 each as part of Apple computer's eRate fund that seeks to add more computers to schools. Another $5,000 will be spent to generate language labs that use iPods for instruction. This was contrasted with a typical language lab, which usually costs about $80,000.

The board expressed glowing praise for the new technology plan, noting the gains made after the last cycle.

"I think from a taxpayer's point of view, the bang for your buck ... is just incredible," said board member Atilio DeFalco.