Progress: New technology pushes Glenrock School District into 21st Century

The Glenrock School District has made tremendous strides despite budget cuts from Wyoming’s Legislature this year.
GSD has again continued to reach all their academic goals.
“All of our schools in the district met expectations on the Wyoming school’s rating report,” GSD Superintendent Coley Shadrick said, remarking that the integration of technology in the classroom has increased scores and made the student body perform better.
Instead of sitting back and taking the cut, the school implemented a Cost Savings Task Force to discuss ways to save money while still providing quality education. Ideas fluctuated, and several have already been implemented, pending approval from the Wyoming  Department of Education. Students are being moved to different buildings, a preschool is planned for Grant Elementary and all schools will move to a four-day week.
All of these changes are scheduled to take place next year, but for right now, the district is concentrating on a continuing to give students a quality education.

Technology
Every student in GSD has a Chromebook Laptop that they every day for learning purposes.
“We had dedicated some funds at the beginning in the year to put some carts in place,” Coley said, remarking that the board started with several computers and they began adding more and more until each student had access to a laptop. Every grade uses the Chromebooks for various types of learning.
At the elementary level, students use programs to practice math, reading and writing. How well those students do is reported to their teachers, who are able to watch their students work through a lesson or review their progress when they are finished.
“It keeps them focused,” said Desirae Hobbs, a fourth-grade teacher at GES. “It’s an incentive even though they are still learning.”
At Glenrock Intermediate/Middle School, students use more advanced programs to delve into science in addition to math and language arts. One class, in particular, focuses on learning early computer organizational skills such as making folders, creating documents and changing file types.
Wyoming’s Legislators have passed a bill ensuring schools will incorporate computer science programs akin to staples in education such as science and math. GSD has already implemented computing in several ways in addition to the Chromebooks.
“We’ve got specific computers for digital video and multimedia, business publishing and we want to integrate coding and more computational fluency,” Coley said. “Computer science can now qualify as a math or a science toward the Hathaway.”
For Glenrock High School students, the school is looking to integrate virtual classes. Although the idea is still in its infancy, the school has already talked about setting up a virtual physics class with Douglas School District.
Converting learning to the screen was a big challenge, but for District Librarian Lisa Shadrick, it has been easier than she expected.
“They have absolutely embraced it,” Shadrick said.
Shadrick has been working on adding a dictation software for students practicing reading, which would allow teachers to listen to the student and see where they need the most help.
GSD is putting their eggs in a basket of technology, and the students are receptive.
“We’ve always had a one-man technology department,” Coley said. “We’ve never really had a person to help teachers implement the technology. . . she is spending a lot of time researching Canvas.”
Canvas is an online learning management system, able to track students progress in real time and see exactly what each student need for their individual learning. The District hopes to get the system in use by next year to get the ball rolling.