Beginning in the 2022-23 school year, Victoria ISD will begin implementing one-to-one technology districtwide. This will be rolled out over the next three school years, with grades three through five receiving Chromebooks in the 2022-23 school year, grades six through eight in 2023-24, and grades nine through 12 in 2024-25.
As of November 2021, Victoria ISD is running a one-to-one technology program at one elementary school, Dudley, and one middle school, Patti Welder, a personalized learning choice school. This semester, one-to-one pilots began at Torres Elementary for fifth graders and Shields Elementary for third graders. Now, one-to-one technology is going districtwide.
Every student across VISD will be assigned a Google Chromebook. A goal of the one-to-one is that every student in grades three through 12 will never be using a Chromebook device that is more than five years old. In addition, once the project has been fully rolled out, it is the plan that each VISD student will be assigned the same Chromebook grades three through seven and again in grades eight through 12.
The District will utilize both the typical one-to-one program approach as well as an on-site one-to-one approach. In a typical one-to-one technology program, an individual school or a school district provides each student with a school or district-owned mobile computing device (i.e. tablet, laptop, or Chromebook). The student keeps this device with them, using it both at home and school. There will be times in which individual teachers and or schools may not have students take the device home based on the curriculum and assignments being worked on, however, the goal is to operate as typical one-to-one programs.
“The benefits districtwide from moving to Chromebooks will be endless,” said Greg Dandio, director of Technology. “Looking at this from a digital learning perspective, students and teachers will be able to work together more efficiently. Having Chromebooks implemented districtwide will enable equitable access to technology and level the learning playing field for all VISD students.”
Teachers and students will also see an expanded opportunity to use a massive library of applications and other resources associated with Google Workspace in addition to web-based systems currently in place such as Schoology.
All funding for VISD’s one-to-one programs is a combination of federal, state, and local funding. VISD was one of many school districts across the country to receive funding from the Emergency Connectivity Fund from the Federal Communications Commission for approximately 3,000 Google Chromebooks and 4,000 hotspots.