DAPHNE, Ala. —Baldwin County Superintendent Alan T. Lee continued his talks about the “Digital Renaissance” planned for Baldwin County Schools on Thursday night at Daphne High School’s Trojan Hall. A crowd of nearly 50 included …
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DAPHNE, Ala. —Baldwin County Superintendent Alan T. Lee continued his talks about the “Digital Renaissance” planned for Baldwin County Schools on Thursday night at Daphne High School’s Trojan Hall. A crowd of nearly 50 included administrators, educators, parents, community leaders and students.
Lee spoke about the needs he has seen in the schools after he completed his first school year here in May.
“When I first came here, I heard rumors that there were certain schools where I wouldn’t want to put my child. I made a point to visit all the schools and go into the classroom and listen to parents and see what the community said about their schools,” he said.
He believed otherwise, but said classrooms could use assistance.
Lee wants teachers to have an additional tool, and he thinks the school system will one day place a laptop in the hands of every teacher and child in the fourth through 12th grades.
The crowd raised concerns including connectivity after hours, how to prepare teachers to use the tool, and when Daphne students may get to use the tool.
Professional development is planned for in expenditures, Lee said.
Lee said determining the next schools on the list to get computers depends on several factors, including whether the teachers were prepared and whether the school had the infrastructure in place to accommodate the computers and give them the needed connectivity.
Daphne Councilman Ron Scott asked for a status update on the connectivity of schools in Daphne. Two of the five schools have wireless campuses, Lee said.
Parents asked about using the computers at home, and what plans the school system had for students who did not have access to Internet at home.
Ultimately, Lee said, he hopes he can provide Internet service to all students through partnerships with Internet service providers, but for the next school year, Lee said students at Baldwin County High School will have hours in the evening when they can use the service at school.
“When the student logs in, they will access the Internet, and it will come back through the school system’s filtration system so they can’t access sites they shouldn’t be accessing. I am going to be going to Internet providers and trying to beg, plead and borrow to cajole them into giving a good rate,” Lee said.
Daphne City Council members present mentioned interest in a partnership between the cities and the schools to provide Internet service.
“It might be a good project and public relationship between the schools and the municipalities. That might be something the school board could ask the cities to help with,” Councilwoman Cathy Barnette said. “We have looked at it.”
“We are talking with a company that has a history of establishing citywide Internet service and I am hoping they will become a partner,” Lee said.
Supporting Educational Enrichment in Daphne’s Schools voiced its support for the technological advances planned for the schools. SEEDS presented checks to each principal in Daphne to offset the costs of training they will attend in Mooresville, N.C.
“SEEDS wanted to make a nominal effort to support what is happening this summer. All of the principals are going to be going to Mooresville to receive training so SEEDS wants to try to help with some of those expenses,” Denise D’Oliviera, director of SEEDS, said.
Spanish Fort parents, educators and administrators were among the first to hear plans for the ambitious technological overhaul intended to revolutionize curriculum delivery countywide.
“We don’t need a reformation; we need a renovation,” Lee told a crowd of about 50 in the Spanish Fort High School library.
The informational meeting on June 27 was the first of seven Lee planned across the county to promote what he’s calling a “Digital Renaissance.”
Lee has launched a campaign to “replicate to the nth degree” what’s been done in Mooresville, N.C.
21st-century approach
Lee said one overriding fallacy has plagued public education in the past 10 years.
“Our problem in education is that we’ve been trying to meet the future doing the same thing we did in the past,” he said.
Of course, adopting the Digital Renaissance does not imply that Mooresville’s accomplishments are due entirely to the presence of laptops. It’s the curriculum-delivery method that encourages engagement and participation, Lee said.
Fielding parent questions, the superintendent said he understands the trepidation surrounding such a drastic change, but world-class schools require world-class thinking and approaches.
Though he conceded that — if implemented — the laptops would, in effect, replace the use of textbooks, he said school libraries would actually become “hubs” for collaborative activity.
He said Baldwin County’s free- and reduced-lunch program mirrors that found in Mooresville and typically provides the most accurate socioeconomic comparisons when school achievement is concerned.
Parent Alison Hill, who has children at all three levels of Spanish Fort’s feeder patters, said her only concern is the loss of human contact a fully automated program would facilitate.
Lee likened it, however, to the prevailing opinion when he was in high school that all male students shouldn’t graduate from high school without knowing how to change the points, spark plugs or oil in their cars.
“That was an expected part of our education,” he said, and no one in the room objected when he asked if those inclinations were outdated.
Another parent who works in the educational technology sector agreed with Lee, saying the opportunities technology affords students actually shrinks the global classroom and increased interaction, whether it’s students recording a podcast on the Civil War, or students debating the American Revolution via Skype with students in London.
Parent Ken Fuqua has one daughter — who will be a junior at SFHS in the fall and a daughter who will attend SFMS the following year — said he was impressed by the Digital Renaissance model “just based on what I’ve seen in the business world.”
“It’s been my experience that the more receptive you are to technology, the more advanced you can become in every way, and that’s especially true for the ones who choose to adopt the new technologies,” Fuqua said, noting his younger daughter opted to do her summer reading on her iPad rather than actual books, and it was her idea.
Parent and Spanish Fort Educational Enrichment Foundation board member Sabrina Nimmer said while she was impressed with Lee’s presentation, her primary concern is with Spanish Fort schools in the present.
“I am in agreement, and I stand behind Dr. Lee and his Digital Renaissance, but at the same time, I need to move the kids at Spanish Fort High School forward now,” Nimmer said, adding she hopes any steps SFEEF takes on its own will keep the feeder pattern on Lee’s “front burner” when it comes to countywide implementation.
Lee did say although there’s no “implementation matrix” in place for bringing all of the system’s 45 campuses online, those schools that show the most progress toward embracing digital technology on their own will certainly remain prominent on the radar because it minimizes system expenditures.
“For example, if you managed to get a laptop in the hands of every teacher (in your feeder pattern), that would be a tremendous head start,” Lee said.
SFHS Principal Marty McRae said implementing wireless access has been a priority since he arrived on campus one year ago, and he was pleased to see SFEEF shared that vision. He now feels confident such an investment will position the feeder pattern to capitalize more quickly on Lee’s plan.
“I really like the idea of us getting our infrastructure done and getting our teachers trained properly. If we could get laptops in the hands of every teacher, that would just be above and beyond where we hoped we might be by this point,” McRae said, noting preliminary research indicates it could take as much as $25,000 to implement wireless service campuswide.
McRae hopes the infrastructure will be in place by the close of the 2011-12 school year, and he was adamant that all parents should become part of the process.
“We all need to do this together,” he said to parents not already involved with SFEEF and its mission. “We need to get (all parents) on board and get them to understand these are the things we need to do for our children.”
SFEEF President Debbie Horst said she felt Lee was “refreshingly candid about the technological needs of Baldwin County students because we’re not where we need to be.”
“As a citizen of Baldwin County I’m excited about his innovative plan. As the president of SFEEF, I look forward to working with him to achieve these goals as soon as possible for Spanish Fort students,” Horst said, noting the organization’s fundraising goal for the coming year will be dedicated almost entirely to technological upgrades for the feeder pattern.
Want to go?
Baldwin County Schools Superintendent Alan T. Lee will host informational meetings about his proposed “Digital Renaissance” at the following locations in the coming weeks:
