District wants to know: What tech should Eanes schools get?

Community volunteers are wanted to give input.

Eanes officials are looking for volunteers in the community — be it resident, student or teacher — who can give input on what digital devices should be purchased for students next year.

Now that voters have approved a bond, the school district has $10.1 million it can spend on technology. Officials are planning to purchase new devices — likely next-generation iPads, based on previous conversations, though that could change — in the summer of 2016.

By being on the task force, volunteers are committing to meeting at least five times in the fall, said Carl Hooker, who heads the school district’s technology department. The findings and solutions will be presented to the board in early December, which will lead to recommendations for bond technology purchases.

Regardless of whether people are picked for this task force, all the symposiums will be open to the public and posted online, Hooker said.

“There will be multiple avenues for feedback and input,” he said. At a May 27 school board meeting, he said parents should be part of these symposiums every step of the way.

While Assistant Superintendent Bill Bechtol initially said that those on the task force would likely have experience with tools, software and applications for digital learning, school board members urged him at their May 27 meeting to rethink that.

Superintendent Tom Leonard agreed.

“An authentic group is going to be skeptics — for lack of a better word — as well as proponents,” Leonard said.

After speaking with voters for months, newly sworn-in board member Julia Webber said she had heard a lot of parents speak about reservations with the iPad program.

Not everyone in the community assumes Eanes needs to be a hightech district, or at least one that gives iPads to every K-12 student to take home.

“A lot of people have questioned that assumption,” Webber said. “This advisory committee is a chance to pause in that assumption and let the community voice their concerns. ... I certainly learned from the master plan that if you have the choir in the room, you think it sounds great. But you need that dissonance.”

The task force will be led by Hooker and Ryan Petru, director of technology services. Task force members would be expected to attend an initial planning meeting, a final planning meeting and four symposiums:

Symposium 1: Teacher Panels. Teachers will provide feedback on how technology tools are working and compare today’s digital learning classrooms to pre-iPad classrooms.

Symposium 2: Student Panels. Students, from elementary to high school, will discuss how learning with a digital device has affected their education and lives.

Symposium 3: Site Visits. The task force will visit classrooms to see digital learning with iPads in action.

Symposium 4: Expert Panel. University professors and business and industry experts will be invited to discuss what college and careers will look like in the future and how technology will affect learning and the workplace.