Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Tony Inglese, CIO of the Batavia School District, presented the current state of educational technology in Batavia schools. Tony says there's a new way of learning and that the district is far ahead of others. One chief factor: the school district is able to make use of the City of Batavia's fiber network, which supports both the speed, but more importantly the reliability, needed. Tony said "when the network goes down, the learning starts to stop happening." Phones, 2-way radios, physical (keycard) access, HVAC, attendance and scheduling systems; all depend on the network, and on 18 tech employees in 3 departments. 

Tony outlined many tech initiatives (individualizing education, Google Chromebook,) some of the successes (remedial algebra; with both tech and nontech
ingredients), and some of the challenges still faced (like, things go crazy when you put 300 WiFi devices in the same room). John Clark asked Tony about calculators now versus in John's day, prompting another member to point out that in John's day the only calculator was an abacus.