Plum School Officials Consider Upgrading Electronic Devices Policy

Plum School District officials hope to continue working on a plan that would allow students to use electronic devices at school for learning.

At a policy committee meeting on Tuesday, board members discussed upgrading the current electronic devices policy in the near future to expand the way students learn in a fast-growing digital age, but a lot of kinks need to be ironed out first.

The current policy prohibits the use of cell phones, telephone paging devices/beepers, laser pointers and any device that provides a wireless, unfiltered connection to the Internet by students unless they have an appropriate reason for having them. Digital computers and personal digital assistants brought to school currently are restricted to classrooms or instructional-related activities.

Assistant Superintendent Timothy Glasspool said officials have been discussing changing the policy for quite some time now. He said allowing students to bring personally owned devices, such as laptops, electronic readers, electronic tablets and other devices could assist with learning in the classroom.

However, officials have to figure out a way to implement the use at school without running into any problems.

Teachers would have to closely monitor what students are using the devices for, and it could be hard in a classroom with 25 students, said school board member Loretta White. Officials also would have to figure out how to handle use of devices in which the district firewall is not present.

"It's fine and dandy to have a device in class, but if you have 25 to 30 students doing it, how do you police it?" White asked.

School board member Sal Colella said it would be good to work on the matter slowly because of all the emerging technology.

"We don't want to rush into something just to have it fail," he said.

Glasspool suggested implementing some sort of pilot program at a district school during the second semester of the 2011-12 school year. He said officials could discuss details for the program during the first half of the year in preparation for it.

Glasspool said the pilot program would allow officials to see what devices work well and how the district system supports them.

"We can see how it goes and then discuss (changing the policy) next summer," he said. "We've done a lot of work with this, but there's still a lot more to be done."