Mon Feb 25 2019, 5:30pm
WHS Room 2203
Regular Meeting

REPORTS TO THE BOARD

Technology Report

To: Michael Green

From: Steve Rippl

Date: February 20, 2019

RE: Tech Dept. Executive Summary

We are moving forward with our large E-Rate proposal to upgrade wireless and cabling throughout the district, but most of all in the primary school. As you may remember we’re being supported this year by the State, who will pay the remaining 30% of the project (Erate covers 70%). All our paperwork is now in with the federal Erate people awaiting approval. Timing will be crucial as the State requires us to spend their money before the end of June, but we don’t want to proceed until we get approval from Erate. That usually happens in late Spring, hopefully, there aren’t any significant delays this year!

We’ve spent a little more time investigating student tablet options. We don’t make much use of them in general (Chromebooks being the preferred device), but there are some key areas where they are useful. We have an aging collection of iPads that will slowly need to be replaced. We looked briefly at Android tablets, and while they are cheaper to buy they aren’t necessarily easier to manage. We’ve still to investigate ChromeOS tablets and that’s next on our list. These have the promise of being easiest to manage, but may not support the kind of use we need. It may be that iPads end up being the best tool for this particular niche, we’ll have to see.

We’ve also been working on a new data system for KWRL which we plan to have ready for use for the bus route reconfiguration coming up for Woodland. KWRL has been doing a great job of leveraging technology to gather and organize their route and ridership data, but up to now it hasn’t been connected to Skyward or integrated quite fully. We’re working with them now to connect things to Skyward from the beginning, making ridership registration easier and facilitating KWRL’s communication with parents about routes, changes etc. There are many moving parts to their data, but the first part to go live will be parent registration this Spring.