Leaders In Learning Through AASA's Digital Consortium

Through our collective involvement in the AASA Digital Consortium, our leadership skills have been strengthened and highly supported.

Like many school district leaders nationwide, our aim is to leverage technology tools to unlock student and staff creativity and efficacy as part of the 21st-century learning landscape transformation. AASA is helping to support growth and progress.

We oversee the education of more than 10,000 students in K-12 in 14 schools in Illinois and Virginia. The Digital Consortium has supported our experiences through the review and application of shared effective practices. In particular, we have focused on equity of access to technology and the concept of students as creators versus students as consumers of digital content.

Our time in the Digital Consortium, which formed in fall 2014, has contributed to our understanding in four areas: tools/devices, access/connectivity, pedagogy and engagement.

Tools/Devices

While education is about learning and about students, the devices allow for a technology revolution. In that regard, we use educational devices students bring from home (known as BYOD practices) as well as Chromebooks, iPads and other tablet devices, across the full span of grade levels.

At Leyden Community High School District 212 in suburban Chicago, all students are provided Google Chromebooks and Google Apps for Education accounts. The district recognizes that technology is changing at a rapid pace, therefore student devices are replaced every two years to ensure that students always have current technology in their hands.

When devices are replaced, the district permits students to purchase the “old” devices for $25. This practice is important because those computers will land in the hands of their parents or younger siblings, further supporting parental access to information and developing future students.

Access/Connectivity/Infrastructure

The city of Salem, Va., has established a community “Salem WiFi” downtown and in other locations. In addition, families with financial need have opportunities for low-cost residential service from Internet service providers, which enables all 1,200 students in grades 9 through 12 in Salem to be anytime, anyplace learners.

Leyden has partnered with Sprint and the White House ConnectEd initiative to ensure all 3,400 students have Internet access when they leave their school buildings. Approximately 17 percent of their students are given a WiFi hotspot to take home. Those devices provide filtered connectivity for their unique devices.

Sprint supplies free data plans to support those devices for four years for each student. Regardless of a family’s financial situation, all students in Leyden have the same access to information and the ability to use Internet tools and resources.

In Deerfield, the district has used Title I resources to supply cellular access for children in need. In addition, the district works with parents on programs such as Comcast Internet Essentials.

Pedagogy/Transformation

Students can influence decisions about their studies in the digital learning environments. In the Leyden and Deerfield schools, all students can accelerate learning through their technology tools, apps and devices.

In grades 3-12, all students use a Chromebook as a core tool in their education. In Leyden, students staff the technology service help desk. Salem emphasizes formative instructional practices, providing descriptive feedback to students and personalizing the instruction.

This emphasis on monitoring the progress of every individual necessitated expanded availability of new tools for learning. Beginning last fall, Salem High School students and teachers more fully leveraged the pedagogical shift through a one-to-one computer device (Chromebook), ensuring every student had mobile technology available 24/7.

In all three districts, teachers have adopted a growth mindset where they always look for the next useful application, online resource or strategy for engaging students in their education and accelerating their growth.

Engagement/Student Agency

In Deerfield, Leyden and Salem, leadership teams rely on students to pilot various devices as we studied the durability, speed and appropriateness of available devices. Student representatives helped us select the tools and informed, along with teachers and administrators, the decisions of the respective boards of education.

In each of our school districts, board vision and teacher engagement supporting digital, transformative learning environments have been cornerstones of successful digital conversion for students. Membership in the AASA Digital Consortium supports our growth as leaders and our districts’ growth in learning.