TORRINGTON – Eleven schools, over a thousand students and one week.
That’s the task the Goshen County School District No. 1 institutional technology department took on earlier this month. When Governor Mark Gordon ordered public places – including schools – to close until the COVID-19 pandemic was under control, the district had to weigh its options for continuing the school year.
There was only one real answer to reach every student while observing social distancing recommendations – the classes would move online.
“When we finally decided that was what we were going to do, we had the date of April 6 that we need to be able to deliver content to kids,” Bryan Foster, Director of Technology for GCSD, said. “We began the week before that, rounding up the machines, rounding up the old laptops and all of the devices from the different school buildings to get those into a position where they could be distributed. We have enough computers for every students, but we didn’t have them in a centralized group.”
“We needed to provide some method where we could keep track of which computers went to which student and all of that stuff.”
Over the course of that one week, Foster, his staff and other school building personnel took on the daunting task or preparing over 1,000 laptop computers to issue to students. According to Foster, someone had to login to each computer as the student that would be using it in order to install important programs and prepare them for the online curriculum.
“That was time-consuming,” he said. “A lot of staff at each one of the buildings helped. We had them out there before we needed them on Monday, so we were pretty pleased with that.”
GCSD Superintendent call the effort “amazing.”
“Our tech department has been amazing,” he said. “They had all of those computers in conjunction with each building, and worked with people in each individual building to distribute those to students districtwide who had a need for those.”
One of the district’s chief concerns was the fact that some homes do not have internet access. To accommodate those students and families, the district has issued 40 wireless hotspots that allow those students to connect almost anywhere. Twelve more hotspots are on backorder. Kramer said the district is paying for the data used by the students to get online.
“For those that have desired to have a device, we feel that we have covered the district completely,” Kramer said. “For every student that had a desire to get one of those devices or for a family who utilized it, we were able to distribute those.”
The district has worked with technology companies Viaero, Verizon and Visionary to get students online.
“We’ve been fortunate enough that local businesses have been very cooperative,” Kramer said. “There’s a combination of national businesses sending those to families. We’ve been so fortunate that our local businesses and internet providers are providing opportunities to get those devices into kids’ hands.
“The company we’re working with actually utilizes a cell phone. They’re able to lock the cell phone down completely and it becomes a hot spot. Those items are readily available. They’re just older cell phones. We’re updating them, sending them out and what they really are is a hot spot for somebody’s family. It’s an affordable process. We’re really able to keep costs low and manageable.”
Foster said the district utilizes a cloud-based online filter, so students will be safe while accessing the resources they need. Since students are familiar with cell phones, operating the hot spots is fairly easy.
“They basically open the cell phone, turn on the hot spot, and connect their computers and that is how they are going to connect,” he said. “We started deploying those, and transportation people are delivering them. It has been kind of cool.”
