Central Bucks School District is a long-time friend of the Learning Counsel, as well as a nationally known hotspot for technological innovation in education. In this educator session, you’ll hear from Jason Jaffe, Director of Technology and Innovation, Lindsay Smith, K-12 Supervisor of Educational Technology, and Brian Merrill, Educational Technology Analyst, all from Central Bucks. According to Jaffe, “Some students just decided not to come into the building, which made it more challenging, but we had the tools in place and we have the goals in place, as well as the infrastructure and protocols all to make this a reality. This would be our goal. We call it IT1, which provides technology to foster creative options for teachers and students, maintaining equity of access among students and enhancing student learning. And in a nutshell, the reason why we came up with that goal is because in our 23 buildings, six or seven years ago, not everything was the same. We want everyone to have the same opportunities because at one point homeschool was paying for Smartboards in some schools, laptops, in other schools. And then some schools have BrainPOP and other schools had Discovery Ed, and it was just really complicated to make it very inconsistent.

“So, we try to make everything the same. For learning management systems, we went with Canvas. We try to develop a consistent classroom model of technology hardware. We try to increase access to student devices in all our buildings. And the reason why that is so important is because when we switched to the pandemic, in the very beginning when teachers were working from home, they basically had the tools to bring to their homes, to make everything the same at their houses. Some of them had different backgrounds, some of them had more dogs barking, and some of them had more children at their own homes, but in general, the tools we provide them, any instructional plan we provided was able to be consistent because our planning was really flexible and was able to work.”

You’ll enjoy this step-by-step presentation and see how Central Buck’s sophisticated transformation is really the heart of simplicity – and something your district can follow immediately to increase your effectiveness and help you find real equity for your learners.