Wireless Educator Initiative Community High School District 128

Program Description  This program provides eligible, full-time CHSD128 teachers with an HP laptop or tablet PC for a period of up to five years.  Participation in this program is voluntary.

Rationale for Program  CHSD 128 Strategic Plan  Implement technologies which enhance the delivery and content of the curriculum  Implement technologies which support the collection, interpretation and analysis of student performance data  Implement technologies which enhance parent/student/teacher/district communications  Online Course Management (Moodle)  School Improvement Planning  Curriculum Revision Practices  ACT Readiness Standards  Assessment Delivery & Data Analysis

Program Eligibility  All full-time CHSD 128 teachers are eligible to submit an application to participate in the program  Teachers who participate in district-wide initiatives related to online course management, school improvement or curriculum revision will be eligible to apply  Teachers must commit to a 2-hour orientation workshop which provides basic training in power management, security, docking, wireless configuration and application management  Teachers who select a tablet PC, must participate in an additional 2-4 hour workshop on using applications specific to writing tablet technologies

Security and Management of Hardware  All tablets and laptops will be equipped with Computrace LoJack.... a software-based computer tracking, data protection, asset tracking and theft recovery service  Program hardware can only be used for educational purposes consistent with the teacher’s District Acceptable Usage Policy

How will we fund this?  IT plans to interrupt the five-year replacement cycle for district desktop PCs  Extending the use of approximately 130 of 430 five-year old HP D530 computer systems currently in use can free up over $100,000 in projected technology monies. Limits “may” be set for the number of program participants in the first year…to possibly 60 teachers district-wide (30% of all teachers.)  The HP D530 computer systems are Pentium GHz computers with 512MB memory and plenty of hard drive capacity to handle our current application set.  The district currently has 1600 computers in use; a ratio of students/staff to computers of about 2.5:1 (one of the lowest in Lake County.)

Timelines  October – November 2008 > Meet with All-Admin, Technology Teams, Strategic Planning Team, I-Team & STARS to finalize program eligibility requirements and answer questions  December 2008 > Formally introduce program details to teachers and provide a Moodle discussion forum to answer questions and get feedback  January 2009 > Teachers apply for participation in the program (application deadline: February 1, 2009)  February – March 2009 > Finalize IT readiness requirements and budget details  July 2009 > Acquire and test hardware  August 2009 > Distribute program hardware and begin training