Just a decade ago, local students were still taking trips to the library or computer lab to write papers. Today, laptops and tablets are commonplace in the classroom and virtually every student has a high-powered smartphone in his or her pocket. With a new school year now underway, The Ticker explores what school tech policies look like today.
 
According to Brandi Reynolds, director of technology for Traverse City Area Public Schools (TCAPS), one of the district’s top priorities right now is adopting the Michigan Integrated Technology Competencies for Students (MITECS), which redefines how technology should be taught and used in schools.
 
The primary goal of the MITECS is to shift technology education away from learning how to use specific technology tools (such as word processing software) and toward integrating technology in all aspects of day-to-day learning. Essentially, the MITECS recognize the fact that today’s students are all digital natives and probably already know how to use most technologies.
 
Reynolds says that TCAPS is currently working with teachers to integrate the MITECS into the curriculum – a work in progress given that the new competencies aren’t even a year old. With how accessible technology now is in the classroom, though, adoption of the MITECS might not take long. For grades 3-12, TCAPS has a one-to-one ratio between students and laptops. At the K-2 level, the ratio is three students to every device. “There’s a lot of technology access now that wasn’t available a few years ago,” Reynolds says.
 
Just this year, TCAPS purchased 4,200 Chromebooks, which Reynolds thinks are especially good for elementary students. “They’re touchscreen and they flip completely over, like a tablet, so they’re much more user-friendly for our littles and our lower grades,” she says.
 
TCAPS isn’t the only local district dedicated to providing students with the best technology. Grand Traverse Area Catholic Schools (GTACS) has the MyTech program, where every student at St. Francis High School is issued an iPad for the school year. The devices have allowed GTACS to embrace electronic textbooks, educational apps, and easy in-class research.
 
The biggest drawback to all this technology in school is obvious: distraction. Chromebooks and iPads certainly open doors for learning, but how do schools make sure students aren’t using those devices to do things they shouldn’t?
 
Reynolds says one of the keys for TCAPS is a robust content filtering system. Any device connected to a TCAPS school network is regulated by the content filter, which both blocks specific sites (including social media) and uses a word-specific filter to keep students off sites that aren’t appropriate at school. The filter is updated on a daily basis to block newer sites or threats.
 
Teachers can request exceptions to the filter if there is a legitimate reason (school newspapers use social media to promote their latest stories, while business classes create Facebook pages for their mock businesses).
 
At GTACS, the iPads issued by the MyTech program come equipped with “Guided Access,” a technology that allows teachers to restrict devices to accessing only certain apps.
 
But the biggest tech distractions in schools still tend to be the ones students bring themselves: cellphones. Cellphone policies in schools haven’t changed much in the past 10 years, but some schools are now tweaking the policies further. The official TCAPS policy, last revised in 2011, allows students to have and use cellphones at school, but prohibits their use in the classroom, on field trips, or in assemblies, “unless the use is instructed by instructional staff.”
 
At East Middle School, students are expected to leave their phones in their lockers. They can receive a “not prepared” citation from teachers if they bring their devices to class.
 
Beginning this fall, teachers at West Senior High will enforce a policy where mobile devices are “neither to be seen or heard” in classrooms. Any violations give the teacher grounds to confiscate the device and send it to the office, where the student can pick it up it at the end of the day.
 
`Central High School has a more lenient policy than West’s, and some teachers even allow the use of cellphones in the classroom, though a new proposal at the school would restrict cellphone use further, in an effort to “increase time spent with peers in face-to-face interactions.”
 
“There are legitimate uses of phones in the classroom, so it’s hard to establish a total blanket policy,” says Christine Guitar, head of PR for TCAPS. “But TCAPS is trying to be consistent at each of the schools so there’s at least an understanding from the student perspective and the parent perspective of what’s expected with phones, unless they’re told something different.”