MaSSSoftech

Students return this week to new age of learning tools

By Vanessa Miller (Contact)
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Monarch High School senior Wes Snyder, 17, right, gives a tour of the athletic facilities to incoming freshmen and their parents Wednesday. The new students, from left, include Elise Kinney, Bridget Radley and Megan Radley, all 14.

Monarch High School senior Wes Snyder, 17, right, gives a tour of the athletic facilities to incoming freshmen and their parents Wednesday. The new students, from left, include Elise Kinney, Bridget Radley and Megan Radley, all 14.
Information technology instructor Maureen Curno, right, helps Jackie Esler, a new sixth-grade science teacher, with access to the school district’s Web site during a technology training session at Arapahoe Ridge High School last week.

Photo by Marty Caivano

Information technology instructor Maureen Curno, right, helps Jackie Esler, a new sixth-grade science teacher, with access to the school district’s Web site during a technology training session at Arapahoe Ridge High School last week.
From left, incoming Monarch High School freshmen Bridget Radley, Lizzie Johnson and Elise Kinney, all 14, walk through the Louisville school during a tour for new students Wednesday. When Boulder Valley students start school this week, they’ll return to classrooms with upgraded technology, like interactive white boards and high-speed Internet.

From left, incoming Monarch High School freshmen Bridget Radley, Lizzie Johnson and Elise Kinney, all 14, walk through the Louisville school during a tour for new students Wednesday. When Boulder Valley students start school this week, they’ll return to classrooms with upgraded technology, like interactive white boards and high-speed Internet.
Back to school

Start dates for students in the Boulder Valley and St. Vrain Valley school districts:

Tuesday: Boulder Valley transition day for sixth- and ninth-graders

Wednesday: First day of school for the rest of Boulder Valley’s middle and high school students; first day of school for all St. Vrain Valley students

Thursday: First day of school for Boulder Valley elementary students and half of the Boulder Valley kindergarten students

Friday: First day of school for the remaining half of Boulder Valley’s kindergarten students

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BOULDER, Colo. — Boulder Valley students’ lives these days are teeming with the latest and greatest technology, and now — after years of district upgrades — so are their classrooms.

When students and teachers across the Boulder Valley School District return to school this week, they’ll have more digital tools at their disposal than ever before. Any teacher in any school, for example, will be able to pull up any educational video or slideshow on their computer through an on-demand-type communal database aimed at streamlining teaching materials and eliminating paper and plastic products.

“We used to use VCRs and DVDS and send them from building to building,” said Dave Williamson, Boulder Valley’s chief information officer. “No more. All that now is housed centrally in a big video library.”

That same system will deliver cable TV to most classrooms in the district, he said, and dramatically improve student and teacher Internet access.

“That used to be slow and hampered,” Williamson said. “Now things are going to be much, much better.”

One of the more glamorous technology advancements that some schools have boasted for a while and other schools will debut this fall are intelligent white boards that are a far cry from the black boards and chalk of yore. They work like giant iPhones, allowing teachers or students to touch the board, drag icons and access the Internet in an instant to look up news articles, world maps or anything else relevant to the subject at hand.

“I love smart boards,” said Alex Young, 13, an eighth-grader at Boulder’s Southern Hills Middle School.

“You can do anything on them,” her friend and classmate Caitie Reck, 13, agreed. “They’re a lot nicer than a projector, and they’re fun.”

Even tests are changing shape. Many of today’s Boulder Valley teachers nowadays are quizzing their pupils using clickers rather than pencils and paper. Students are assigned clickers and then asked multiple choice questions that they can answer with their devices.

“The new technology lets teachers check in more with how many kids are getting it,” said Southern Hills parent Pat Gilbert.

‘This is just getting started’

Most of the district’s latest technological classroom advances that will make a noticeable difference this fall are a product of Boulder Valley’s new “wide area network.” Crews installed the 70-mile fiber optic network — paid for through the $296.8 million bond initiative passed in 2006 — over the past year with the goal of digitally connecting all of the district’s 55 schools.

“It’s not something you see physically, but students and teachers will notice a significant difference in their ability to do things — like access the Internet,” said Williams, the district’s information officer.

The network has increased the Internet-connection speed from 1.5 megabytes a second to 10 gigabytes a second, and it’s allowed the district to convert all of its phones to “voice over internet protocol” — meaning calls are made via the Internet rather than traditional phone lines.

Boulder Valley used to have several separate phone and Internet connections, each with its own service fee. Reducing the number of connections not only improves reliability but saves the district thousands of dollars each year, Williamson said.

“And this is just getting started,” he said of the new technology’s benefits.

As part of this year’s upgrades, the district has installed ceiling-mounted projection systems and speakers in most classrooms allowing teachers to transmit whatever is on their computer screens to projection boards that all students can see, Williamson said.

“I think, in some ways, Boulder Valley is catching up to the curve,” he said.

Training Boulder Valley’s thousands of staff members will take time, he said, but eventually the new technology will make a “fundamental difference” in the way students learn.

“It will take a healthy dose of staff development,” Williamson said. “But it’s certainly going to affect the way they teach in the long run. No doubt in my mind.”

Green technology

Not all of the district’s new technology is being used on teaching aids. Money from the district’s bond initiative also has funded high-tech energy savers that have helped many Boulder Valley buildings go green.

Most classrooms now have individual thermostats to keep sunny rooms from wasting heat and shaded ones from wasting air conditioning. Many rooms also now have motion sensors that automatically turn lights on and off when people enter or leave.

Some classrooms even have lighting ballasts that automatically dim the electrical lights as the sun brightens a room, district bond spokeswoman Susan Cousins said.

“That’s intended to be something that building occupants don’t even notice,” she said.

A few schools — like Manhattan Middle School in Boulder — are using solar panels, and other buildings have been uniquely designed to capture daylight with “light shelves,” larger windows and skylights, Cousins said.

In the bathroom, many toilets have been converted to low-flow tanks or dual-flush operations. Dual-flush technology, she said, allows a person to push the flusher one direction for a lot of water and another direction for a little.

When it comes to keeping students safe, bond money and a federal grant has enabled Boulder Valley to upgrade its security technology by installing automatically locking doors in some buildings and downloading building floor plans into an online database.

'This makes it all easier’

Students are reaping the benefits of new technology outside the classroom, as well. High-schoolers regularly use the Internet for research and study help, of course, but many teachers also send home assignments via e-mail and provide online resources to study aids.

“My Spanish text book was online so I didn’t have to carry it around,” said Fairview High sophomore Maia Raeder, 15.

Southern Hills parent Renate Brummer, of Boulder, said she’s been amazed at some of the new tools at her daughter’s disposal.

“The smart boards are fantastic,” she said. “They allow teachers to explore everything very visually and in a quick manner. You don’t have to deal with the colored chalk and the dry-erase boards.”

Brummer said her seventh-grader has shared about how she can flip around digital images of protractors during geometry lessons instead of having to hold up rulers while trying to calculate measurements.

“This makes it easier, by all means,” Brummer said.

And while district officials and national education experts are predicting technology will continue to become more and more central to classroom instruction, Brummer said she’s still pressing the importance of traditional reading, writing and calculating skills to her child.

“You can’t take a laptop into King Soopers to write a shopping list,” she said.

And, Brummer said, even with all the new tools in the world, students still depend on good instruction to gain long-term knowledge.

“Technology alone doesn’t make a good school,” she said. “It’s secondary to the teachers and the principal and the parent involvement.”