Parents and other community members were invited to the library of Batavia High School last night to learn about how the City School District has been implementing technology in the classroom.
District officials shared how technology is being used and how they would like to improve the use of technology with the help of money from the Smart School Bond Act. The district is applying for $2.1 million in state grant money to upgrade the district's technology infrastructure and purchase technology equipment.
It's an increase in attention on technology that the district has been preparing to implement for a couple of years, Superintendent Chris Dailey said.
One goal is to provide each high school student and eventually, students at the lower grades, with smart devices that connect to the Internet at school. Part of the money from the state will be used to improve the wi-fi infrastructure to support that level of always-on connectivity.
"Go on any college campus right now, walk into a classroom or lecture hall, there's no pen and paper anymore," Daily said. "It's all utilizing a device. When you're going into most industries now, people are using these kinds of things. We're trying to put those kinds of devices into the hands of our students at a younger age so they're natives to it versus visiting the technology."
Whether a student comes out of high school bound for college or going straight into a career, the future belongs to those with the technology skills needed to compete in the digital age.
"This doesn't replace the instruction that's going on," Daily said. "We want to prepare students for the world that we don't know will exist in a couple of years, with jobs that are evolving as we speak at things like the STAMP project, or you look at what's going on in the incubators in the Rochester and Buffalo area with new businesses evolving all the time at the unviersities. We want to put our kids at an advantage so that when they come out they can walk into those jobs with some skills that other kinds may not have in our region."
Top photo: Mason Battaglia shows off a 3D printer. One of the things he was able to do with the printer was solve a problem for the marching band. The drummers needed glow-in-the-dark mallets, so Mason used the 3D printer to make them.
this whole article is based
this whole article is based on a 2.1 million dollar Grant. hmmmmm and if the Grant is Not approved? hmmmmm just for the heck of it, let's say the Grant gets approved, now the school needs to hire personal who are qualified to teach this new technology i.e. teachers.
I am not one of them, but from previous posts, a lot of taxpayers don't like teachers.
I'm thinking you can have all the latest gadgets and super Wi-Fi but without a teacher it's all useless....
What if the Grant is not approved ? the children of the paperless society are what?
after re-reading my comment .
after re-reading my comment ...... give them all a trophy, they are all winners.