Take-home technology is prominent in the future of Lehigh Valley schools

Saucon Valley is considering creating a program that will give students laptops or tablets to use during school and take home. Salisbury started such a program this school year. Easton and Bethlehem already have experience with it. Take the NEWS POLL.

As the Saucon Valley School District works on plans to roll out a one-to-one technology initiative in its schools, the district will be turning to other Lehigh Valley schools to learn tips and the pitfalls to avoid.

The school district is exploring starting a pilot program next school year in the seventh grade that by 2014-15 would put a laptop or tablet in the hands of all secondary school students.

One-to-one means that every student is given a laptop or tablet to use during the school day and, in some programs, at home. Saucon Valley has not decided which devices to buy or lease.

The program is still in the early planning stages as a committee explores the options with the goal of presenting a plan to the school board in the early spring.

Lehigh Valley schools have had mixed results with similar technology programs.

Salisbury Township School District is reporting success with its new program as has Easton Area School District with a small pilot.

The Bethlehem Area School District’s program began in 2003-04 and was later investigated by the Pennsylvania Auditor General's Office after about 80 of the district’s 10,978 laptops went missing. The 2009 report issued after the probe reported lax administrative controls over the technology inventory.

Bethlehem has new technology management in place and has moved away from one-to-one in favor of using carts after having success with them in its high schools as part of a state grant program. Carts hold a couple dozen laptops that teachers can sign out and bring to their classes.

As of the 2010-11 school year, 30 Pennsylvania school districts and three charter schools reported having one-to-one programs, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

Technology directors cited student access to technology as the genesis for diving into one-to-one.

“You can’t really leverage the usage of technology until you solve the access problem,” Saucon Valley Assistant Superintendent Carl Atkinson said. “Students don’t always have universal access.”

Programs that fail or struggle seem to do so from a lack of planning and institutional change, said Randy Ziegenfuss, director of data and technology for Salisbury.

Every Salisbury middle and high school student has a laptop to take home after a five-year roll out of a districtwide technology overhaul that changed the way administrators do business and teachers teach.

“I think the districts that aren’t successful are where someone rides into town and says, ‘Oh, one-to-one. That sounds like a nice thing. Let’s do that,'” Ziegenfuss said. “It is rushed. People don’t buy into it and it is a mess often times.”

Bethlehem Area School District Director of Technology Frank Arbushites joined the district after the program’s planning occurred so he can’t really speak to the pitfalls Bethlehem faced.

Bethlehem decided to change course in 2008-09 after seeing success using carts in its two high schools, a method popularized through the state’s Classrooms for the Future grant, he said.

The biggest hurdles for school district’s pondering a one-to-one program are cost and the staff needed to run them, said Tom Drago, the Easton Area School District technology director.

Easton did pilot a one-to-one program with about 150 students at the Easton Area Academy, but budget cuts axed the technology coordinator tasked with handing out and checking in the computers each day. The district laid off 12 technology coordinators two years ago.

“The staffing cuts have really hurt one-to-ones,” Drago said.

For schools such as Bethlehem and Easton, grant funding and local tax support for those programs just aren’t there anymore. Drago would love to get his staff back and roll out a one-to-one program in phases, but it is a huge challenge in larger school districts, he said.

"I have to realize this is the Easton Area School District. There are people that can’t pay their mortgage or their taxes,” Drago said. “People are struggling here. It is absolutely a challenge for a larger school district.”

Smaller districts, such as Salisbury and Saucon Valley, haven’t been hit with the same budget woes. Salisbury’s taken steps to protect itself from lost computers and repair costs.

Students who want to take laptops home must opt into an insurance program. It carries a $65 per student premium and a $50 deductible.

Salisbury is self-insured so the fees go into a pool to fund repairs and the district pays the difference. A small number of families chose not to have their children take a laptop home and those computers get checked in with staff at the end of the day.

Saucon Valley is considering tablets to stick within its existing technology budget. A laptop based one-to-one program could be funded with the current budget at first but would later require more money.

“It is possible the decisions you make three years from now will be very different,” Atkinson said. “If we were doing this two years ago, tablets wouldn’t even have been in our range.”

Easton renews a different Apple lease every year. Apple threw in 150 free iPads with last year’s middle school renewal, Drago said. Some are now being used in elementary art and music classes.

“The lessons that I have seen with art in the elementary schools are just unbelievable,” Drago said.

After a pilot, Salisbury found iPads didn't support the kind of content creation, such as making movies or presentations, the district wanted in its classrooms. The five-year overhaul strives to move away from lectures to student-driven content creation, Ziegenfuss said.

“Tablets have not quite evolved to the point of easily creating content,” he said, adding that might be totally different in a few years.

Salisbury’s program has been overwhelmingly well received, although it unexpectedly has caused some issues for families as they adjust to having the laptops in the home, he said. Salisbury has twice surveyed the school community on the program and has held workshops for parents to respond to problems.