District Technology Plan
BATH COUNTY SCHOOLS
Owingsville, KY
http://www.bath.kyschools.us
Creation Date: September 2015
As per the SLD: The technology plan creation date is the month and year the technology plan was written, not the date when you began to develop or draft it. The SLD defines the creation date as the date it first contained the five required elements in sufficient detail to support the services requested on your Form 470. The creation date must be prior to the date the Form 470(s) is posted.
Plan Start Date: July 1, 2016
Plan Expiration Date: September 30, 2017
Approved Bath County Board of Education: November 19, 2015
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Acknowledgments
District Technology Staff / School Technology CoordinatorsBrenda Holder, DTC/CIO / Ron Weaver, BCHS
Keith Crouch, Network Administrator / Lauren Colwell, BCMS
Jeremy Weaver, Network Administrator / Michelle Lyons, CES/STLP Adviser
Shannon Hill, OES/STLP Adviser
School Library Media Specialists
Keri Johnson, BCMS/OES / Technology Resource Teachers
Aaron Baldwin, BCHS/CES
Additional District Contributors
Shelly Sanders, Board of Ed. Chair
Barbara Razor, Board of Ed. V.Chair
Sandy Crouch, Board of Ed. Member
Hurschell Rawlings, Board of Ed. Member
Connie Grimes, Board of Ed. Member
Christina Grace, Special Ed. Director
Tony Roth, Facilities Director
Teresa Caudill, Assessment Coordinator
Karen Hammons, Instr. Supervisor
Kim Biddle, DPP
Rhonda Back, Elem Inst Coord/CIITS
Vickie Wells, Food Service Director
Jo Brewer, District Finance Officer
Paul Prater, BCHS Principal
John Slone, BCMS Principal
Jerry Thatcher, CES Principal
Mark Leet, OES Principal
Todd Neace, BCMS Asst. Principal
Other / Students
Kristal Robinson, BCHS STLP Adviser
Vickie Moriarity, BCMS STLP Adviser
Jessica Haynes, CES STLP Adviser
Table of Contents
Executive Summary 1
Planning Process and Methodology 5
Current Technology and Resources 7
Curriculum and Instructional Integration Goals 9
Curriculum and Instructional Integration Goals – Evaluation 11
Student Technology Literacy Goals 11
Student Technology Literacy Goals – Evaluation 15
Staff Training/Professional Development Goals 17
Staff Training/Professional Development Goals - EVALUATION 20
Technology Goals 22
Technology Goals – Evaluation 29
Budget Summary 29
Attachments/Appendices (Optional) 31
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Executive Summary
With financial support from the state of Kentucky and federal programs, Bath County School District continues to increase the availability of modern technology in K-12 classrooms. Teachers are receiving professional development to manage the integration of technology into effective lessons for students. Increasing technology proficiency in all buildings makes for technology-rich, engaging activities and projects for Bath County students.
Network infrastructure improvements make it possible for the Bath County network to run more efficiently with centralized management of critical network resources and a centralized server farm to manage services for all schools. Server virtualization has decreased the actual number of servers onsite and has increased the management capacity of those virtual servers. State management of the diagnostic, GC and DC servers has kept down time to a minimum. Repair is done in a timely manner, and the district network runs more efficiently because of the state monitoring of network resources. The bandwidth provided by the state of Kentucky was upgraded from a 100M connection to a 250M connection before school began in August 2014. With this new amount of bandwidth, connection issues to the classrooms should be resolved.
The migration from Threat Management Gateway to LightSpeed provided by the state of Kentucky will provide a more modern solution for Internet filtering. Local districts are required to meet the requirements of CIPA (Child Internet Protection Act) and LightSpeed seems to be a good choice for that management.
All schools are investing in the purchase of hand-held devices for use in the classroom for Internet research and as eReaders. The use of these devices has greatly increased at all educational levels. Bath County Schools IT Department has implemented the use of Identity Engine software to require a login on any hand-held device accessing the Bath County Schools wireless network. A district provided email is required to login and use wireless access, which all staff and students in Grades 3 and above have. Automated logins at the elementary level have reduced the responsibility for students in the early grades. Activity on the Bath County Schools network can then be tracked via the Identity Engine software and login information. This login is also required for any personally owned device (BYOD) that might be accessing the wireless signal. Staff and students sign the Bath County Acceptable Use policy which states that school district rules and regulations will be followed by anyone accessing the network resources of Bath County Schools regardless of the device being used. To minimize login and password sharing, a single-allowed sign on feature is activated in this software. At this time only district provided credentials have access to the wireless sign on.
In addition, special education teachers across the district have iPad’s and iTouch’s for their students to use interactively. These devices have been purchased for the introduction of special education and speech students to interactive devices to assist their learning via technology. There has been a great deal of success in the use of hand-held technology with special needs students.
All principals and assistant principals have been provided iPads for administrative use. District administrators and program coordinators also have iPads for use when attending meetings and other activities where a wireless signal is available to allow access to email and Internet resources.
Bath County High School and Bath County Middle School are allowing students to bring their own devices (BYOD) for use at school and in classrooms. Use of personally owned devices is subject to the same requirements under the Acceptable Use Policy as district owned devices.
The Kentucky Department of Education’s Office of Knowledge, Information and Data Services and the Kentucky Program of Studies require that technology be an integral part of each school’s overall plan to move all children toward high academic standards. Students and teachers will have direct access to technology resources through the use of workstations, SmartBoard technology, student responders, classroom speaker systems, wireless technology, hand-held devices, Encyclomedia and other software appropriate for each content area. MAP assessment at the elementary and middle school levels, A+ and other programs have been added to the resources available to Bath County students and teachers. Teachers have access to the DesCartes curriculum from MAP to determine appropriate learning activities according to the students’ RIT band scores.
Bath County High School has purchased an ACT Prep Software program that allows all high school students access to ACT practice tests and activities online both at school and at home. Students in the CTE Departments at Bath County High School have the opportunity to become industry certified using a variety of online or written certification tests funded through CTE Funds. The Microsoft IT Academy was implemented at Bath County School beginning in August 2015. This state provided curriculum has units and lessons to allow students to challenge industry certification exams at no cost to the school district.
STLP chapters are active all Bath County Schools. Each chapter has a unique focus based on the interests of the students at each school. Chapters meet weekly after school to complete projects and prepare for competition at the regional and state levels. The high school group will also meet during the scheduled club days. Bath County Board of Education has supported the STLP programs by offering a stipend for STLP advisers at every level.
All classrooms have access to the vBrick system to provide appropriate television programming as well being a repository for uploaded videos saved by teachers and library media specialists to the vBrick server. These videos can be accessed through any district workstation and shown in small-group or large-group settings.
Students at Bath County High School will be assessed using online resources for tests such as KOSSA and EOC assessments in areas required by the state of Kentucky. KOSSA tests are completed in March for students who are preparatory in one of the Career Majors from Career and Technical Education and are taking the third class in the career major. Students who are successful on the KOSSA test are awarded a certificate at graduation and may be granted college credit for that certificate. Students passing any industry certification or KOSSA test and who have also passed the ASVAB or WorkKeys assessments are deemed to be Career-Ready as they graduate from Bath County High School. Students who have achieved the benchmarks on ACT tests are deemed to be College Ready. Any student who has both college and career ready designations gets to be counted as 1.5 on the accountability score for the high school.
End of Course (EOC) assessments were required by the state for the first time in the 2011-12 school year. High school students will be assessed online who have taken English II, Algebra II, US History and Biology (Integrated Science II). The multiple choice portion of this assessment will be calculated as a percentage of the student’s final grade in the class.
Another online test is the ACCESS test that is given to our Hispanic students at all levels in February to determine progress on English Language Learning.
The Food Service Department has taken advantage of the Community Eligibility Program (CEP) for Bath County students to provide free breakfast and lunch for all students. Instead of completing a Free/Reduced Lunch application, all families are now asked to provide a Household and Income Form to use to enter information into Infinite Campus to determine the lunch status of students. Funding for FRYSC, Title I, USF and other programs will still require that this lunch status data be provided. Data is transferred nightly from Infinite Campus to the NutriKids program that food service uses to count meals served by using a unique identifying number for each student.
As primary stakeholders in the education of Bath County students, parents need access to student information in a real time environment. The One Call Messaging system has been implemented for Bath County parents and staff. It is used to communicate to families about school events and activities, student absences, cancellations and closings, and other information. The text messaging feature is available for those who wish to receive information that way. Message recipients can also get the app, My Call Now, that gives information about messages that were sent through the automated system.
Bath County’s district and school webpages are also important sources of information for all stakeholders. The district and schools are using a web-hosted service from SchoolPointe by Digital School Network to allow the schools and individual teachers access to input information that pertains to their programs/classes. All schools are posting Daily Announcements to the school web pages. A centralized calendar is also used to advertise events. Software from SiteImprove has been used beginning in August 2015 to monitor spelling and broken links on the webpages in order to provide a better page for viewing.
Infinite Campus Parent/Student Portal has been used for several years. Each school has a person designated to manage parent portal access so that a parent can request login information at any time. ACT, PLAN and MAP scores have been included in the information that parents can see on the portal in addition to attendance, schedules and grades. In October 2011 Infinite Campus released an iPhone app to access Parent Portal, and many Bath County users are now taking advantage of this new feature. Instructions for accessing the iPhone app are published on the banner of the Parent Portal login page. There is also a Campus Mobile Portal App for Android devices available through the Amazon Appstore or Google Play.
Every school communicates with parents and stakeholders electronically through emailed daily announcements and/or weekly newsletters. The district maintains a Parents and Stakeholders distribution group to facilitate the process of sending informational items. There are over 900 members in this email group.
Student data is provided to parents through regular reporting – a minimum of four mid-quarter progress reports and four regular report cards per year are generated through the student information software program. Teachers can print individual progress reports to distribute to students or email/mail to parents as needed. Informational letters concerning attendance and discipline matters are mailed as needed and recorded in the Student Information Software.
The culture of education for Bath County students continues to change. More technology incorporated into strong curriculum will give our students advantages as they compete for opportunities that will determine their futures. Access to technology has generated a new attitude toward teaching and learning. We are moving forward toward the goal of proficiency and beyond on the Information Highway.
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Planning Process and Methodology
The District Technology Proposed Plan will be distributed by email to administrators and teachers in the fall of each school year. A broad base of input will guide technology planning toward more efficient and effective use of funds. As the plan is developed, stakeholders will review and make suggestions on the final version. The completed District Technology Plan will be reviewed and approved by the Bath County Board of Education.
The Bath County Schools District Technology Plans are posted on the district web page for review at any time. The 2016-17 proposed plan was distributed on September 30, 2015, to administrators and teachers in the district. Those people were invited to submit information via email for inclusion in the planning process.
A review of the current District Technology Plan was emailed at the same time as the proposed plan. Teachers and others were invited to discuss next year’s additions and changes to maximize the impact that technology has on teaching and learning and to keep the plan in compliance with USF and KDE technology planning requirements. Technology initiatives which had been completed were reviewed and removed from future plans.
Items offered for consideration for the 2016-2017 plan include:
Increased emphasis on the nine elements of Digital Citizenship
Digital Access
Digital Commerce
Digital Communication
Digital Literacy/Education
Digital Etiquette
Digital Law
Digital Rights and Responsibilities