National Affiliate Spotlight: A small district in Maine takes the lead on education technology

The district, which serves the towns of Kennebunk and Kennebunkport, is the first-place winner in the 2007 Digital Boards Survey in the small district category.

The survey, coordinated by the Center for Digital Education and NSBA and sponsored by Verizon Business, recognizes school boards that use information technology to better engage local communities and constituents and improve the delivery and quality of instruction. The winning districts were honored at NSBA’s Technology + Learning Conference in Nashville last month.

Maine School Administrative Unit 71 (MSAD 71) has 2,300 students in five schools.

The district provides a laptop to each of the board’s nine regular school board members and two student members, and all board agendas, minutes, meeting reminders, and back-up materials are posted online, as well as school district policies and all information for the board’s standing committees. Having the board policy book online allows for immediate updates, says school board President Maureen King.

Board meetings are televised on a cable channel and are available online via podcasts. King said online access has helped board members respond to constituent concerns about two particularly thorny issues -- a state law requiring district consolidation, which means MSAD 71 will be combined with the even-smaller Arundel district, and decisions about facilities in response to the leveling off of enrollment.

The district has improved home-school connections through the use of teacher blogs, says Jason Saltmarsh, director of information technology services. Every K-5 teacher has a classroom blog where they post homework assignments, field trip permission forms, or other information for parents. Some teachers update their blogs daily; others once a week.

Parents who subscribe to a teacher’s blog are automatically notified by e-mail whenever new information is posted. “Parents don’t have to come to us. We go to them,” Saltmarsh says. So far, 1,100 parents have subscribed.

The district’s monthly cable TV show features Superintendent Thomas Farrell interviewing a panel of students about the issues they face. A recent program addressed high school students’ feelings about a new security system at their school.

Nearly all the district’s K-5 classrooms have an interactive “smart board” that teachers use to illustrate their instruction with online visual content.

For example, during a lesson on amphibians, a teacher might share a short animated clip of frogs produced by BrainPOP or Discovery.com. The video clips enliven lessons by offering students “something concrete and tangible they can relate to,” Saltmarsh says.

Every seventh and eighth-grader has a school-provided laptop, thanks to a statewide initiative started four years ago. MSAD 71 students not only use their laptops for traditional purposes, such as conducting research for reports; they also produce movies and podcasts.

Last year, the district began offering virtual high school courses that the small district didn’t have the resources to provide. Students can take the courses at school or at home but must meet with an adviser to make sure they are keeping up with their assignments. So far, 24 students have taken an online course, mostly on advanced math and science topics, and Saltmarsh expects an online course on Mandarin Chinese will be increasingly popular.

Another new initiative is the 21st Century Classroom Project, under way in three high school and three middle school classrooms. The teachers have been given smart boards, laptops, and the Senteo interactive response system -- along with training on how to use these resources.

The Senteo system involves  handheld, wireless devices that let students respond instantaneously and anonymously to a teacher’s question. Teachers can then know how many students understand a particular lesson and can adjust their instruction accordingly.