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U-46 adopts digital math resources, purchases 11,000 computing devices

District buys thousands of Chromebooks

This fall, thousands of high school students within Elgin Area School District U-46 will receive personal computers - a huge step forward in the district's vision of providing one-to-one devices to all students.

The technology upgrade is a result of the school board's recently adopting new mathematics resources, mostly digital, for high schools.

Instead of a multimillion-dollar textbook adoption, the district is purchasing 11,000 Dell Chromebooks for high school freshmen, sophomores, most juniors and even some middle schoolers, taking new algebra and geometry courses this fall, said Amy Ingente, district math coordinator.

Total cost of resources and technology - including graphic calculators - is roughly $5.5 million.

"We made a shift in the last three years not to buy technology for technology's sake," said Trisha Shrode, director of curriculum and instruction.

"We wanted the technology that was necessary to bring forward good instruction and curriculum."

Current math resources were adopted in 2011 and are not aligned to the district's more rigorous standards-based learning curriculum. Now, math textbooks are heavy on equations with few word problems, Ingente said.

Ingente said the new resources provide equal amounts of conceptual problem-solving and real-life application of math.

High school teachers vetted and tested resources from multiple vendors in the classroom last fall.

Officials settled on purchasing digital algebra and geometry textbooks from Discovery Education, which also offers materials in Spanish to support U-46's roll-up of dual-language programming into high schools, Ingente said.

"We would be giving each student a Dell Chromebook to be their textbook, in essence. It has a touch screen and a tablet-style hinge so it could fold over," she said. "We are also asking for a charging station for each of the classrooms."

The district also is buying a series of pre-calculus, calculus and finite mathematics resources from Pearson and Advanced Placement statistics textbooks from MacMillan. Students will be using physical and online versions of those textbooks. Calculus courses require the district to buy sets of Texas Instruments' Nspire graphic calculators for classrooms, Ingente said.

"So when juniors sit down to take the SAT tests, every student would be equipped with one of these devices," said Ingente, adding that smartphones or tablets with internet access cannot be used as calculators during exams.

High school math teachers will be trained on the new resources starting in May. All high school teachers will receive training on the new technology this spring and summer. The district will spend roughly $1.8 million in grant money to train teachers, Ingente said.

Officials are considering extending school library hours and having activity buses available for students who need to stay after school to finish homework due to lack of internet access at home. Discovery math resources also are available through a downloadable app so students could complete their work at home and upload it when in school.

The school board also recently approved increasing the bandwidth so schools can handle more digital resources.

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