District seeks tech upgrade

The Newport-Mesa Unified School District approved a sweeping three-year technology plan at its Tuesday board meeting, seeking to modernize the district’s computers and other electronic systems.

Five years ago, Newport-Mesa adopted a technology plan to provide better services for both students and teachers, establishing online courses and bolstering Internet access in class. In the new plan, the district intends to go a step further by making all students technology-literate by ninth grade, increasing the ratio of computers to students, and training nearly all teachers to use state-of-the-art programs by 2009.

In the last two years, a pair of projects undertaken by Newport-Mesa have stressed the need for more technology in schools. The district’s strategic plan, adopted in late 2004, cites a need to use modern information systems in classrooms and to provide less affluent students with the same equipment as their wealthier peers. The project list for the Measure F school bond, passed in November, includes a technology training center for faculty and new infrastructure on all campuses.

“Two years ago, it was very obvious that technology was a large element and would be very visible on the radar,” said Steven Glyer, Newport-Mesa’s director of educational technology. “You could no longer just hope things worked. We’re beyond that. So as we created the current technology plan, we went back to the strategic plan and looked at some of the key things that it identified.”

The new technology plan would put those desires into concrete terms. Among the specific proposals mentioned in the 134-page plan are: