Lake County Schools is excited to announce that by December all high school students will havegreater access to technology in their classrooms in order to support authentic literacy and student centered collaboration.
Over the new few weeks, Chromebooks will be deployed at East Ridge and South Lake high schools, completing year two of the five-year Instructional Technology Roadmap.
“The reaction to this project has been overwhelmingly positive from both students and teachers,” said Duane Weeks, director of Information and Instructional Technology. “I think the difference in this program from other one-to-one initiatives is that it has good instruction at the center of it, as opposed to attempting to have the device teach the student.”
Despite budget cuts at the state level, Lake County Schools has made rapid progress on the project. Deployment at high schools is ahead of schedule, and the district is now investigating the possibility of piloting Chromebook distribution at a middle school at the start of the second semester.
“East Ridge High is almost at a 50 percent adoption rate in three days of distribution,” said David Hass, who is co-leading the project for Lake County Schools.
“These devices are being used to amplify instruction,” says Jayne Chapuis, who is working with the instructional focus of the project.
Lake County is committed to providing a device to every student in grades 3-12 and boosting the amount of technology in grades K-2.
In two years, Lake County has gone from 300 Chromebooks to over 23,000 Chromebooks in use across the district. The Chromebook was selected because it is easy to maintain and is integrated with the Google Apps for Education. Replacement parts are relatively inexpensive. Screens, for example, are priced at $30.
A student-paid technology fee of $32 for take-home devices will help pay for a refresh after five years and makes the project sustainable.
The goal next year will be to complete deployment at each middle school and then work on the elementary schools over the next two years. The Information and Instructional Technology department is also working on refreshing school-based teacher, administrator and staff devices over the next two years, as well as building a new interactive classroom display.
