School system is awash in cutting-edge technology
By: Steve Rauscher
MONTGOMERY As late as 1997, the entire Montgomery school district had exactly one computer with a dial-up Internet connection.
Four years and thousands of dollars later, the district is home to a private fiber-optic wide-area network connecting its 1,500 Internet-ready terminals, as well as a host of other cutting-edge technologies.
Gail Palumbo, the district’s director of technology, said the quantum leap in Montgomery’s technology occurred in 1997, when the district received a $95,000 grant from the state Department of Education’s Technology Literacy Challenge fund.
"That really got the ball rolling," Ms. Palumbo said. "That gave us a lot of what we needed to get where we are today."
The district now boasts four computers per elementary school classroom and six per classroom in the middle school and high school. In addition, the high school industrial arts program benefits from the use of a CAD computer-aided drawing machine. District science students use electronic probes to take measurements during experiments, which are automatically entered into their computers. The probes offer greater accuracy and allow the students to sidestep the time-consuming task of scrawling the measurements into hand-drawn tables, providing more time for manipulation of the data.
"You used to spend a lot of time plotting points and setting up graphs," Ms. Palumbo said. "I don’t want to call that gruntwork, but it’s time-consuming. … Now we have more time for experimentation and analysis."
All this illustrates the philosophy behind the district’s upgrades: Technology is a tool.
"That’s always been my philosophy," Ms. Palumbo said. "We want the kids to use it and not even think about it. We don’t want it to be, for the teachers, something else they have to teach. We tell them, ‘Do what you’ve always been doing, and use it to make things more interesting.’ "
The district’s program begins in kindergarten, which eventually will mean that by middle school the students will be computer literate.
"We’re trying to restructure our curriculum based on the fact that the kids are coming in already knowing how to use computers," Ms. Palumbo said.
Some of the district’s new equipment has enabled it to offer entirely new classes, many of which are wildly popular. In the high school, for example, students line up to take teacher Pat Lott’s television production courses.
Each high school and middle school classroom is outfitted with a color TV. Each morning, students view the morning announcements, prepared the afternoon before by TV production students in the high school studio. The students also create commercials for upcoming school dances and sports events. One memorable segment used a scene from the Adam Sandler comedy "Billy Madison" to introduce students to the "words of the day" dilatory and callow.
In addition to being fun, Mr. Lott said, the class gives students valuable skills using cutting-edge technology.
"This is the future for corporations," he said. "These kids are coming out of here with a big head start."
Perhaps it is the interest on the part of local businesses in educating the future work force that compels so many companies to make donations to the school. A trio of local businesses recently donated a refitted school bus, painted bright green, to be used as a mobile TV studio. Other companies have donated used computers.
"We’re not averse to begging," Ms. Palumbo said.
The district’s ultimate goal, she said, is to make the new high school, set to open in 2004, completely wireless.
"We want to have it so a student can sit out on a lawn and receive a live videoconference with a scientist in Africa," she said.
And while it may sound like a pipe dream, Ms. Palumbo is confident the district will realize its ambition.
"The kids here start learning web design in elementary school; they’ve got the ability," she said. "The only missing piece is the wireless part."