A Conversation with... Technology upgrades include increased broadband capacity and 90 tablet computers When you came to De La Salle in 2005, where was the school in terms of technology? When I first got here, the first thing I noticed was Chris Dean (Assistant Principal) walking around picking up attendance slips from classroom doors. We administrators joke about it now, but I couldn’t believe we were still doing that. Since then, we’ve moved forward in technology by leaps and bounds. Initially, what did you do with technology? We started to make a plan. We had to have enough infrastructure for all of the teachers and administrative staff to make use of technology. 6
In my first five years, we instituted wireless in the building. We put Smart Boards in every classroom. We issued every teacher a laptop. We developed an online system for grades, attendance, and communicating with parents. Eventually, we evolved to teacher web pages. And slowly but surely we have looked at student use, primarily in the library/ media center, which we now call the Digital Resource Center (DRC). Besides the name change to DRC, how has the library changed over the past seven years? When I came here, there were six computers in the corner, in study carrels for student use. Now we have 42 computers in there, along with 30 Google Chromebooks (tablet computers).
We took the two rooms adjacent to the librarian’s office, cleaned them out, knocked out one of the walls, and made one room a computer area The other room is now where our Information Technology (IT) people are. It’s much better for our IT Director Dennis Parks to be right there, along with his assistant Mrs. Sheryl Anderson, to assist with any computer issues that may arise in the DRC. You’ve established a Technology Leadership Team. What do they do? We’re not fundamentally different from any other school or business in that the rate of change in technology is so rapid that any big institution is always going to be behind the curve. How you deal with that is really the mark of how successful you’ll be as an institution. What our tech team does is look at issues and figure out how we’re going to acclimate. One of the things we’ve done is to say that as a teaching staff, we’re going to allow interpersonal devices laptops, tablets, smart phones. A lot of our teachers have been using computers nearly their entire lives, and certainly throughout their college careers.
Students in the Digital Resource Center – using Chromebook tablets. whole thing wouldn’t freeze when you had multiple people online. We also allocated funds in the budget to increase the wireless capacity in the library to accommodate all those computers and tablets, as well as in one wing where we have two teachers teaching the freshman seminar using Google Chromebooks. What’s the tech team looking at for the 2013 - 2014 school year? We meet every other week, a standing meeting, to talk about future issues and budget. Our conversation has centered on where to increase the wireless capacity, and we’re looking at the Commons and the Cafeteria. It makes sense that there should be more wireless availability in those areas where students congregate.
We’re also looking at a third set of Google Chromebooks for the freshmen. Right now we have two teachers, The team has also looked at increasing each with 30 Chromebooks. We’re looking to put a third teacher in that our connectivity and speed. Over the wing. summer, we increased our broadband Why Chromebooks with the capacity to be nine times greater, profreshmen? vided a bigger “pipe.” We had teachers A couple of years ago, we decided using laptops and the Smart Boards, to offer our Freshmen the “Career on the internet, and then trying to get Forward” program through Michigan a YouTube clip up on the Smart Board. Virtual University to satisfy the State They needed that greater speed so the of Michigan requirement for at least
