NSBA's Calcasieu Parish Site Visit

I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to attend a site visit to Calcasieu Parish this week. Wow. According to Dr. Cheryl Abshire, Chief Technology Officer, Calcasieu does not have bond funding or a big technology budget! She clearly stated how it happened: the district decided that technology integration would be the focus of all stakeholders, and grant funding for the past few years has been targeted at making this happen.

Here are a few of the most interesting elements I saw:

• Calcasieu has twice as much of everything we have: schools, students, and computers. However, because of their understanding and INSISTENCE that professional development must accompany any technology placed in classrooms, they have 12 full-time professionals in their Instructional Technology division. St. Mary Parish has one. Guess who?
  
• In every classroom we visited, students were divided into groups and rotating through stations to complete hands-on projects. My favorite: a group of first-graders using headset/microphone combos to read "The Ant and the Grasshopper" into Audacity. When they finished, each saved his or her own file to a Blackboard content area for replay later. At the end of the year, the teacher burned CDs of each student's work: a portfolio of the year. (Audacity is a free application.)
  
• A tool we could use: a device that connected six sets of headsets so that a group of students could listen to a video without disturbing the other groups.
  
• In many rooms, students were preparing projects with MovieMaker (free) or creating content for sharing on classroom ActivBoards (Promethean interactive white boards; software is free). Students were also using the boards as one of the group stations.

Interesting, too, was the fact that Calcasieu's technical support division functions with fewer personnel than I expected. I spoke with the leader of their technology team, who explained that he chose a different direction when he asked for additional funds and was denied. Using Footprints software, he established a Helpdesk which takes advantage of VPN to diagnose and repair as many problems as possible without having technicians leave their offices. Equipment with bigger problems is shipped to the office for repairs. Standardization of equipment purchases is key. Their technique saves travel costs and time for technicians, as well as improving the quality of their work experience.

In our visit, we saw evidence that all Calcasieu stakeholders--not just teachers and students--were addressing and utilizing the "killer apps" of the 21st century: collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking. Well done!