The use of computers has become pervasive throughout our lives at home and at work. That pervasiveness also exists in education as new tools continue to be made available to us for use in the classroom.
The model we utilized for years consisted of computer labs able to accommodate entire classes. Each school had at least two of these labs to provide computer access to many classrooms. While this model provided computer access, it was not easily or frequently accessible to our staff and students. As a result many teachers did not have the opportunity to properly utilize the increasing number of educational Internet applications available.
A strong push was made just prior to the 2009-10 school year to greatly expand student access to computers. With the introduction of cost effective netbooks, we felt that this was the time to introduce our 1:1 netbook program at our middle schools. A year later this program was introduced at our high schools and we currently have approximately 560 students in USD 331 with access to 1:1 computing in grades 6-12.
The resources we can now provide to our students via the Internet alone have exponentially increased over the last two years due to the implementation of our 1:1 program. New online classroom management systems such as Moodle allow teachers to easily deliver content to a large number of students year after year. Students now have the ability to easily communicate with teachers via email. These are only a few of the many new tools at our disposal. We are excited to be offering these opportunities to our students and feel this is an exciting time to be a part of USD 331 Kingman-Norwich.
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