Numerous upgrades have been accomplished and the division is looking forward to a successful new year.
The Board of Education of the Good Spirit School Division (GSSD) says it looks forward to embarking on the new year ahead in 2011 by reflecting on the drastic changes which took place this past summer. All schools as well as the Administration Office took part in a major upgrade to technology allowing the division to affect the quality of education delivered to students says Withman Jaigobin, Superintendent of Schools and supervisor of the Technology Department.
Since the inception of the GSSD in 2005, it has been a goal of the technology department and senior administration to implement a technology plan division-wide that would see all schools brought to a level playing field. For the past few years technology refreshes were being completed as per past agreements in differing parts of the division.
"In essence, at any time in the cycle, there would always be some facilities 1-3 years behind in technology. The goal was to completely redesign, refresh and replace 100 per cent of the educational technology and related infrastructure throughout the entire school division," details Jaigobin.
In the summer of 2009, the GSSD started work with the IBM K-12 division to discuss the future of the technology landscape.
"IBM offered a total solution that was manageable not just from the technology perspective but also the staff perspective," says Jaigobin.
"We based our work upon existing partnerships from previous divisions and expanded on it to look at ensuring technology inequities were addressed in all of our facilities."
In order to accomplish the goals of both equality and appropriate preparation for the future, Jaigobin says GSSD invested in an IT Optimization study through the IBM K-12 Services Consulting Group.
"It was aimed at shaping what the 2010, five year refresh project would look like for the division.
"Once the technology refresh had a concrete, approved plan, GSSD, IBM and MicroAge staff took on the massive challenge of completing this task over the summer months of July and August."
The initiative included the removal and recycling of 2,000 plus workstations and servers, configuration and deployment of 1,600 workstations and 550 teacher laptops, an active directory redesign, a complete replacement of division cabling, a replacement of 189 network switches, the design and configuration of three network VLAN's and installation of 160 wireless access points, professional development training for all 600 teachers division-wide, division image builds for elementary, high school and administrative profiles as well as the configuration and implementation of IBM ISS firewall solutions.
Mike East, Industry Executive with the IBM K-12 Business Unit, says, "It (the technology refresh) demonstrated thought leadership as it clearly positions Good Spirit to be the leading school division in Western Canada - giving them the infrastructure to truly allow their schools to move to 21st century teaching and learning practices - and effective use of educational technology to improve student achievement."
Jaigobin points out, "The significant changes include new computer workstations for every student and a wireless infrastructure in every school. Also, one of the main components of the rollover is the investment in providing all teaching staff with a laptop, one of the few divisions Canada-wide to do so. Personal laptops are putting technology tools and resources in the hands of our teacher. In this way, we are serving the everchanging needs of students by ensuring teaching staff are up-to-date and have easy access to technology.
"Our technology department... worked extremely hard to make this technology refresh happen in only two short summer months," adds Dwayne Reeve, Director of Education.
"By mobilizing forces with outside agencies such as IBM and MicroAge, our goal of an up-to-date, sustainable technology environment for both students and staff to take advantage of has become a reality. Throughout the process, we continually emphasized that this investment must ultimately improve the level of education and student achievement within the Good Spirit School Division," he says.
"The school division and IBM recognize the large technology learning curve many will go through due to the refresh and, as a result, the next two years will see both work together to ensure staff have the necessary skill set to use the tools effectively."
