HISD to add new tech to classes
Robotic device will improve streaming for online-only students
Some Houston ISD students soon will get a new classmate. Its name: Swivl.
HISD leaders plan to outfit hundreds of classrooms in the coming months with a robotic device called Swivl, which supporters say improves the quality of live-streamed instruction and offers a better experience to children in online-only classes during the pandemic.
Swivl is a small orb-like machine that sits upon a tripod and connects to an iPad. The console links up to a tracking device worn by a teacher, as well as microphones that can be placed nearby. When the teacher moves around a classroom, Swivl moves the iPad in the same direction and captures the audio, ensuring the educator remains in view and easily heard.
The company’s software also can record and store video of instruction, a feature HISD teachers already use on other platforms.
HISD’s purchase comes as educators throughout the district and state continue to juggle teaching in-person and online-only students at the same time. While many educators livestream their daily classroom instruction, fixed cameras limit teachers’ mobility and sometimes fail to capture clear audio.
“The current technology used by HISD was the best available when the
pandemic struck,” district administrators said in a statement. “Swivl allows HISD to improve the educational experience for teachers and students.”
About 44 percent of the district’s roughly 195,300 students remain in virtual classes, a figure that has not moved much since HISD resumed in-person instruction in mid-October.
HISD officials expect 50 campuses will receive five to 10 Swivl devices each as part of a pilot program through the end of the 2020-21 school year. If the effort proves fruitful, HISD officials said Swivl could arrive in some of the district’s other 200-plus campuses during the 202122 school year, even as the public health crisis subsides.
District officials said each Swivl package and an accompanying iPad will run about $1,050.
With online-only instruction poised to continue beyond this school year, HISD administrators asked the district’s school board earlier this month to approve up to $10 million in spending on Swivl. Trustees raised no objections and asked few questions before unanimously supporting the request.
“I support trying out new technology and seeing what will work for our kids, because it’s hard to know what’s going to actually work in the long run,” HISD Trustee Dani Hernandez said.
No educators publicly spoke against employing the technology, while the president of the HISD’s largest teachers union, Jackie Anderson, said the organization’s leaders were not aware of plans for the technology.
HISD’s COVID plan calls on employees to reconfigure classrooms to ensure they remain six feet apart from students “whenever possible,” but it does not address teachers moving around classrooms. Anderson said the Houston Federation of Teachers receives daily calls about failures to follow social distance guidance, but those complaints are not related to administrators pushing teachers for closer contact with students.
“If you have principals telling teachers they need to be moving about in a crowded classroom, that’s when we might,” Anderson said.
Several Texas universities and smaller public school districts, including the Great Hearts Texas charter network, have used Swivl in recent years to record and review the quality of teachers’ instruction. HISD officials said they have no plans to use Swivl for that purpose.
More recently, a few districts bought the technology for the same immediate reasons as HISD.
In Canutillo ISD, located near El Paso, district leaders provided Swivl devices to about 275 of their 450 teachers starting in December. The vast majority of Canutillo’s 6,000 students remain online-only after El Paso endured one of the nation’s most devastating coronavirus outbreaks.
Oscar Rico, Canutillo’s executive director of technology services, said Swivl has lessened the burden on teachers who were struggling with the technological challenges of livestreaming instruction.
“They were putting computers on books and making stands and having three different machines going that made things echo like crazy,” Rico said. “We didn’t want to add more menial tasks to their plate when we could take away the brunt of that.”
If HISD administrators expand the Swivl pilot and approach the board-authorized $10 million limit, it would mark one of the district’s most expensive technology purchases tied to the pandemic.
HISD is projected to run a deficit of roughly $130 million in a $2 billion budget this fiscal year, which ends in June. However, HISD’s “rainy day” fund remains in solid shape after the district saved significant amounts of money due to school building closures in spring 2020.
Public school leaders also hope state officials, who are deciding how to distribute $5 billion in federal stimulus funds allocated to Texas in December 2020, will pass along some of the money for pandemicrelated costs.
“HISD is prepared to continue to offer virtual instruction in some capacity where the use of the Swivl camera can be applied once attendance rates return to normal,” district administrators said in a statement. “One of the purposes of the pilot program is to fully evaluate the long-term value of the Swivl technology and to help us best determine how to utilize this tool.”