Background Information
Seneca High School has been in State Improvement Status for the past 4 years for failure to make adequate yearly progress toward reading and math achievement benchmarks. As such, the school improvement team has been looking for ways to improve student achievement and success. We feel it is our duty to the student to determine and implement means that will best prepare all our students for life after high school; this includes college and career readiness.
Last school year, we reinstituted the technology planning committee, with 2 sub committees; one for policies and one for device considerations. As in the District Technology Plan of 2012, the primary goal of the school is to improve Annual Yearly Progress (AYP). The means for doing so involve a predominant use of technologies. These initiatives include the use of Renaissance Learning Systems STAR reading and math progress testing three times per year, the implementation of Blackboard Learn for online class collaboration, and a predominant direction towards a 1:1 initiative where each student will be issued their own mobile learning device. As such, the network systems and infrastructure have been developed to handle the increased demand. Faculty members have had the entire 2012-2013school year to learn and get comfortable with the Blackboard Learn system, including opportunities for use in their classrooms, collaborative professional development days, and witnessing demonstrations from their peers on various methods and implementations.
The acceptable use policy (AUP) has been rewritten to accommodate the new intended direction and a laptop device has been identified for both the students and the staff for next year. To confirm the validity of these choices, Seneca High School will conduct a small pilot program with one teacher and 17 students beginning April 2, 2013 and lasting through the end of the current term. These students will use the laptop devices in all classes and will give us vital feedback on how to adjust our program for the 2013-2014 school year. With all these team-led changes and implementations, we hope to achieve our goal of better preparing our students for their futures.