•  BSD Technology Department

     
        "Tomorrow's skills, taught and learned in today's classroom."
     
    This simple, straight forward explanation of education was as applicable and true to the mission of school systems centuries ago as it is today; however, there is a catch.  Our children today face a world that will require them to have a skill set much different than that of students just a decade ago.  The ease of access to a vast array of digital information nearly on demand, means that a student's education must include  the 21st century skills of problem-solving, critical thinking, communication, and technological literacy in addition to the three R's.  With an ever-flattening global economy, our graduates will need to be able to access information, synthesize it, and collaborate with their colleagues in real-time with great effectiveness and efficiency to compete and maintain a competitive advantage.
     
    In order to achieve this, our students must have frequent and regular access to instructional technology that is purposely and strategically integrated into learning experiences that align to technology literacy standards designed with the challenges of tomorrow in mind.  Critical to achieving such an outcome is ensuring that educators have the technological resources and adequate professional development.  As life-long learners, educators too, will need to learn and master technology literacy standards in order to effectively design and deliver educational experiences for today's students.
     
    The Brandywine School District Technology Department, guided by the District Success Plan and in partnership with the Curriculum and Instruction Department, remains committed to the following goals and objectives:
    • increase the availability and access of student instructional technology in the classroom to deliver and enhance teaching and learning on a daily basis
    • create a network and technology infrastructure that will support all of the needs of instructional delivery
    • provide students with 21st century skills for the demands of tomorrow's workforce and the rigor of post-secondary education
    • integrate the purposeful and strategic use of technology into all facets of education
    • develop a digitized and customizable curriculum that promotes personalized learning
    • provide staff with the necessary technology support and professional development 

    To this end, the Brandywine School District has been guided by its current 5-Year Instructional Technology Plan developed in 2012 noting the following major accomplishments:

    • mobile devices and classroom display device to all secondary teachers
    • core content classrooms supplied with 15 iPads and charging cart (approx. 3,000 devices) 
    • increased bandwidth at all six secondary schools (high schools at 1 Gig connections and middle schools at 100 meg connections)
    • all six secondary building complete with wireless infrastructure
    • implementation of a common learning management system - Schoology
    • providing professional development to teacher teams and PLCs on use of technology package beginning Fall 2015/Winter 2016
    • 95% of all secondary administrators completing initial "blended learning - instructional rounds" professional development offering consisting of a series of five full-day workshops
    • on-track with implementation of teacher devices, classroom displays, and student device deployment at elementary level
    • on-track to have all nine elementary buildings completely wireless by Winter 2017

    Please check the additional Technology pages in the navigation pane to the left for more information regarding Brandywine's Technology Department and our path forward.  We are in the process of creating new pages and hope to complete the work by June 2016.