The History of Our Digital Conversion

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.

In 2015 as dean of the Warner Graduate School of Education at the University of Rochester Raffaella Borasi stated “This new approach to instruction can be transformational, and it would be very valuable for current and aspiring K-12 teachers and administrators to learn about it." She was referring to the Digital Conversion work underway in the East Irondequoit CSD. One of her professors, Dave Miller, had been working closely with the district and had been sharing his finding with the dean. Over the next 3 years this relationship has blossomed into a partnership, and spurred the development of a K-12 Digital Consortium.

• East Irondequoit CSD partnership announced
• New advanced certificate approved by NYS Education department
• Programs in Digitally-Rich Teaching and Instructional Technology
• Warner School of Education at the University of Rochester and East Irondequoit CSD recognized by OnBoard magazine:
  • Warner School of Education - Digitally Rich Teaching
  • East Irondequoit CSD - Digital Conversion
• National Science Foundation and Robert Noyce grants announced
• New Center for Learning in the Digital Age (LiDA Center) announced
• The new K-12 Digital Consortium:
  • https://www.warner.rochester.edu/newsevents/story/2131
  • http://k12digital.org/

In 2018-19, we were 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. For more detail regarding this work please visit our Digital Conversion web site: http://dc.eastiron.org/