September 14, 2009 - Tulsa, OK. The Berryhill School District has taken large and immediate steps to implement the bond initiative that was recently passed in April. The school system has been working with Tulsa-headquartered IT Solutions Provider Peak UpTime for assistance in providing infrastructure equipment as well as overall technology planning and implementation. Peak UpTime will be present at Berryhill School’s upcoming Board Meeting on September 14 to give an overview of this recent technology implementation.
Changing the Classroom Experience for Students, Teachers, and Parents
One of the major upgrades from the bond initiative was the implementation of SMARTboards in each classroom. The SMARTboard enables interactivity between students and teachers as well as parents. More reserved students benefit through more interaction and become more socially adept. Teachers will now have more to offer their students in breadth and depth of lesson plans, as they have the new capability to collaborate with other teachers remotely across the country, and download other teachers’ lesson plans on similar subjects to augment their own curriculum, rather than “recreating the wheel.” SMARTboards can also provide teachers with assistance during Parent-Teacher conferences, for example, in showing how their children are progressing. Using the SMARTboard software opens the future possibilities of providing parents access to lesson plans from home. Parents could potentially be able to access homework assignments and contact the teacher if assistance with an assignment is needed, and this in turn would encourage a more open and collaborative environment between teachers and parents.
“Students already connect socially with other students across the nation and globe in electronic gaming, Webkins, Facebook/social network accounts…classrooms are finding the need to become more mobile as well,” says Superintendent Mike Campbell. Teachers who are enabled by technology to open more learning possibilities to students are more satisfied by the contributions they make to student achievement. “Likewise, they are more satisfied with their work environment and less likely to leave for more advanced school systems,” states Campbell.
Economic Impact of Bond Vote
Higher student achievement impacts the local community through increased competitive advantage of the school. Even prior to the bond vote, more and more students have been coming to Berryhill Schools. We have had 600 student transfer requests for our district every year for the past 5 years,” comments Campbell.
Planning for Growth
Not having the proper goals and initiatives in place to handle the future demands takes its toll on the schools. It simply takes longer to solve issues, efficiency suffers, and downtime increases without proper infrastructure to handle the basic IT related tasks. The storage of student data, computer lab resources/maintenance, and protection against disasters are other concerns that the new technology implementation will encompass.
“Across the nation and globally, teachers and students connect through interactive means, from K-12 through higher education. It is a force of society as a whole. Technology’s role in this increases proportionally to meet that demand. Classroom technology must also advance to meet the student’s learning needs. It is exciting as a solutions provider to be a part of that process,” states Travis Flake, Manager of Education Solutions at Peak UpTime.
About Berryhill Public Schools
Berryhill Public Schools is an independent school district serving Pre K – 12th grades, serving over 1200 students, and is located in a residential community seven minutes west of downtown Tulsa. For more information, visit: http://www.berryhill.k12.ok.us
About Peak UpTime
Peak UpTime is a complete networked IT services company serving small to medium (SMB) and enterprise customers with software applications, managed services and infrastructure technology solutions. Peak UpTime is committed to education and has established a substantial presence in the Energy, Government-Education-Medical (GEM), Financial Services and Oklahoma SMB markets, with presences in Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, and Texas. For more information, visit: http://www.peakuptime.com.