HIDOE's technology plan to support innovation
The HIDOE is a nearly $2 billion organization that has tremendous impact on Hawai'i's present and future workforce, communities, and families. Every day we work with students to transform their thinking about what is possible to improve lives, systems, and communities. We have the power, ability and responsibility to provide cutting edge technology within our teaching and learning structure; it goes hand-in-hand with preparing future leaders of all industries to innovate, make discoveries, and deliver knowledge in clear and captivating ways.
For this reason, one of the areas of focus to advance the HIDOE as a complex education organization is a multi-year technology plan. Technology is much broader than devices and software — the technology I am referring to is the broader system of how we engage in discovery and apply meaning to learning, and includes student and staff direction.
The HIDOE team is embarking on a comprehensive five-year plan to modernize old technology and build more efficient and user friendly systems, to improve how we use technology to efficiently and effectively gather and analyze critical data to inform our decision-making, and to leverage technology to create a dynamic learning environment for our students aligned with real world applications. To accomplish this, we are having conversations at all levels of the organization, including discussions with our Board of Education. On March 13, the five-year technology plan was presented to the Board of Education outlining the capabilities the Department needs and the characteristics essential to a vibrant and supportive technology landscape that keeps pace with technological change year over year.
As I continue my visits with our schools across the Islands, I have seen some schools engaged in amazing work with technology and computer science (CS), including in national and international academic competitions. This Thursday, May 3, we will be presenting computer science standards to the Board of Education for systemwide adoption. The standards are guideposts for the type of integrated CS-based experiences we want our students to have to be well prepared for college, careers and community impact. Rather than structuring a step-by-step implementation plan, we will be using these standards to provide space for teachers to develop interdisciplinary lessons and student projects and design a structure for lesson sharing so that we build on one another's knowledge. This is an exciting time for the HIDOE to support school-based designs and Complex-led curriculum development.
To support our schools in this work, we also will be addressing the need for a coordinated, cost-effective system for technology refreshes so that students at all schools have access to quality devices. We know that we need to provide flexibility for device selections based on grade appropriate levels and curricula that reflects school design. We have about 225,000 laptops and tablets in our classrooms. The challenge is that schools often individually figure out how to pull together the money to replace these devices and curricular materials. We will maximize our dollars with collective purchasing power for refreshes, while providing curricula-informed flexibilities.
Our school and classroom leadership is a huge asset, and they will shape our direction. During the summer months we will provide further details around this collaborative to build a multi-year technology support system that addresses our current and future needs, and ensures we are on the cutting-edge befitting an organization of our size, sophistication and talent capacity. Keep up the great work in the classrooms and don't be afraid to try out new ideas for student engagement through applied learning, creativity and design thinking!
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