In the 2012-13 school year our superintendent challenged us to rethink how technology is used for instruction in our district. She wanted us to see and learn from some of the best schools in the nation, and suggested visiting the schools included in the National School Boards Association (NSBA) annual Technology Education Site Visits. These schools are chosen by the NSBA for their thoughtful and successful approaches to integrating technology. Ann Flynn, NSBA's Director of Education Technology and recent Top 30 Technologists, Transformers & Trailblazers Award winner, writes here "about why education technology site visits are important to allowing educators to grasp the essential conditions needed to support technology innovation."

We began visiting high performing districts, learned best practices and collected lots of good advice. We were confident that we could begin this work and announced that any interested teachers could submit an application to be part of our first 1:1 device pilot. We also contacted a local university (University of Rochester) to seek assistance with the collection of data during this pilot … data to inform whether we were moving in the right direction or not. We did not know at the time that this connection with the University of Rochester would blossom into something extraordinary (click link below to learn more).

Now in 2018-19, seven years after beginning this work, we are well on our way towards the stated goal of leveraging technology to enhance instruction and equip our students with 21^st century skills. The district has garnered national attention for this work and has had close to 500 educators from over 50 school districts visit us in the last 3 years. For more detail regarding this work please visit our Digital Conversion web site:  http://dc.eastiron.org/