Alaska schools get ahead of environmental learning obstacles
Even before the pandemic, leaders in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District in Alaska recognized that technology and distance learning could have a significant impact on students and their academic outcomes.
MSBSD has 47 schools in 25,000 square miles, an area larger than Scotland. A variety of circumstances have caused disruption for his 19,000 students in the district. The biggest factor is bad weather, which typically prevents students from walking long distances to school, said Assistant Superintendent Justin Ainsworth.
Many students and their families also hunt and travel together on a regular basis, making school absences commonplace. Meanwhile, Wi-Fi and high-speed internet access are spotty in some areas of the district.
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“Part of our thought process was, ‘How do we leverage technology so that when students are out of school, learning is not simply interrupted?'” Ainsworth says Mr.
Determined to close the technology gap for these students, MSBSD began building its own 1:1 program in 2015. As a result, in March 2020, when the pandemic first shuttered school buildings and classrooms, the district found itself well ahead of the curve. .
“One of our strategic goals is to enable anytime, anywhere learning,” Ainsworth said. “To make that happen, we had to leverage a variety of technologies.”
Every student in the district now has a Chromebook equipped with a variety of educational software and platforms, including GoGuardian Beacon and Gaggle for student safety, as well as Google Workspace for Education and the Canvas learning management system. Masu. The district offers low-cost internet or hotspots to students who lack Wi-Fi access.
School-wide collaboration supports 1:1 success
Ensuring the success of your school’s 1:1 program requires full collaboration at the district level and with the entire school community.
“None of this work means anything if it doesn’t have a positive impact on student outcomes,” Ainsworth said. “Student outcomes and access must be paramount.”
At the district and school level, it is also important to ensure that faculty and staff have the necessary digital literacy to effectively use these device investments.
“One of the biggest challenges is getting people to understand the potential of technology and integrating it into their daily workflows in a way that yields significant benefits,” says John, managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group. said one Claudia Newman Martin. She frequently works with K-12 school districts.
The Cleveland area, which relies on Google and Microsoft, employs coaches who travel from school to school to help users solve problems and learn how to effectively use the technology at their disposal.
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“We focus on digital literacy, device care, and educating students, families, and staff on how to best manage and care for these devices,” Green explains. “We also help families access the internet, either through our partners or by providing hotspots.”
Before the pandemic, about half of Cleveland’s schools had one-on-one programs, each managed at the individual school level, Green said.
“Right now we’re looking at it from an enterprise level,” Green says. “The IT department takes ownership of that 1:1 program. We enroll devices in mobile device management and ensure rules and policies that can be difficult to address on an individual school basis.” We are making sure we comply.”
Such rules may include enforcing guidelines regarding prohibited and allowed websites, allowed downloads and uploads, or security updates and patches.
“We have an application that teachers and principals can use to help students in their classrooms focus on learning and not just surfing the web,” Green says. “We also have a robust set of cybersecurity applications that monitor threats and risks.”