New Year Focus for Westbrook Schools: Integrating Technology in Teaching

With the addition of SMART Board computer technology in more classrooms-and the hiring of an in-house information technology specialist-the school district's fall teacher professional development programs will focus on using technology to enhance the delivery of curriculum in the classroom and engage student learning.

"Our professional development is focused on building 21st-century skills [by] integrating and using technology to help our students be more creative, to be better problem-solvers and global communicators," said Superintendent of Schools Pat Charles. "We need to integrate technology into the curriculum to help students learn in a new way."

One example of an application of technology to classroom learning is to have students discuss a social studies reading or language arts reading in a closed classroom blog monitored by the teacher.

"Students learn through the banter and discourse," said Charles. "Because of social networking technology, our students are learning in different ways."

The district's teachers will hear two presentations focusing on using technology tools and integrating it in the classroom to enhance learning. On Monday, Aug. 30, teachers will hear teacher and author Steve Wilmarth speak on five major socio-technology trends that will transform learning communities over the next several years. The following day, staff will board buses and travel to Haddam-Killingworth Middle School to hear David Pogue, New York Times personal-technology columnist, speak about personal technology.

Converting the Books

Flaws and limitations in the school district's current accounting and budgeting software spurred the district last year to start investigating new software packages. That search narrowed the choices to four packages appropriate to school systems Westbrook's size. The district's new business manager Lesley Wysocki then further narrowed the district's choices to three: Unifund's Budget Sense, Sungard's Phoenix, and Tyler Company's ADS Profund. Each of the three software options also has available a municipal software module should the town and district decide to choose to share a common system at some point.

Once the Board of Education and the district select the final package, this year's focus will be to convert district systems from the old to the new and then to train staff in the use of the new system. Wysocki and Charles told the Board of Education at last week's board meeting that, of the three, they prefer the Unifund system.

"The Unifund system has purchase-order capability, online-entry capability, and multi-level approval capability. Also, the reporting capability [compared to the current system] is so much more robust. You can more easily group budget and spending categories to enhance financial monitoring by function or by program," explained Charles.

The new system, once installed, will minimize data-entry errors and save time. That's because the central office staff will no longer need to enter data from paper purchase orders into the district's computer system. Instead, purchase-order data will be entered remotely at each school into a shared online budget and accounting system.

The board will continue deliberating on the selection of a new accounting package at its next meeting in September.