By Jeanie Groh

jeanie.groh@salisburypost.com

PHILADELPHIA — The Rowan-Salisbury School System underwent tremendous transformation last school year as the district rolled out a one-to-one digital conversion for all teachers and students in third through 12^th grade.

The district’s successful implementation opened up a platform for Director of Technology Candace Salmon Hosey, Director of Digital Innovation Andrew Smith and Administrator and Lead Technician Clark Poole to share Rowan-Salisbury’s story with educators from around the world here at the International Society for Technology in Education’s (ISTE) annual conference.

They led a packed-out seminar Tuesday to roughly 200 educators sharing their own experience rolling out a one-to-one digital conversion, as well as some things they learned along the way.

“We felt like we had learned a lot,” Smith said. “What we found in talking to other districts is other folks had the same questions we had.”

Over the past year, the Rowan-Salisbury School System solved a lot of problems as they walked through the digital conversion. While they learned a lot from other districts, Smith said, they also “pioneered some other things.”

With the district’s large size and high percentage of children of poverty, Smith said it’s a realistic model for many other districts across the nation.

“If we can make it happen in Rowan-Salisbury, they can make it happen in other districts,” he added.

Last spring, district administrators visited Apple offices in Reston, Va., to learn about leasing options.

They walked out with a contract in hand and deployed MacBook Air laptops to district teachers the day before they went home for the summer a month and a half later. Over the summer, they focused on building an infrastructure and network that would support thousands of digital devices across the county.

In August, they deployed laptops to high school students and later that fall, they moved on to deploying iPads to middle schoolers. Elementary students received their iPads immediately following winter break.

Hosey talked about the community support, policy and leadership piece of a successful one to one digital conversion. Poole discussed the behind-the-scenes and infrastructure portion of the process, and Smith talked about the necessary change of culture and professional development involved in the process.

They stressed the importance of technology facilitators, positive relationships with law enforcement and community buy-in.

At the end of the session, the three took questions from audience members. They had to cut off questions after they went seven minutes over their session time. Afterward, they spend another 15-20 minutes answering more questions during the transition between sessions.

Smith said they got “a lot of really good feedback” and that “folks are really interested” in how to implement a one-to-one digital conversion.

He added that they tried to address the practical questions their fellow educators had.

“That was the reason we really did it,” he said.

One-to-one devices is “the big movement,” Smith said. “Technology is here to stay.”

He added that those who haven’t implemented it yet are either looking into doing it now, or waiting to do it later.

Rowan-Salisbury’s presentation was one of 126 presentations selected from 525 proposals submitted. Only 24 percent of lecture proposals submitted to ISTE were selected this year.

The district brought 225 teachers, principals and administrators to the four-day education technology conference, making up more than 1 percent of the total attendance.