Moving into the 21st century

Thursday, May 10, 2012

As another school year begins to come to a close, the Area 30 Career Center Board of Directors is looking forward to the upcoming school year, as several areas will be seeing changes.

As in recent meetings, the board discussed a new technology lease. Director of Technology Ruben Hinners spoken to the board on Area 30's Learning Management System and its connection to the upcoming technology lease.

The initial lease will be taken out for $145,000. This will go toward purchasing hardware of the career center.

After receiving four quotes from different learning management systems, Haiku is the system in which Hinners recommended.

"Students will have the capability to access their school work outside of the classroom," said Hinners. "It also allows a parent to see how things are going."

With the Haiku system students are able to not only view their grades, receive reminders and announcements, but teachers are also able to give quizzes over the system.

"We wanted to teach our teachers and our students more 21st century skills,' explained Hinners. "It's a conduced and collaborative view of all the classes a student is involved in."

Initially, five systems were reviewed before being narrowed down to the top three. In the end, Haiku had the simplest format.

"It has a great online video knowledge base," explained Hinners. "Along with a great simple interface."

Besides adding the Haiku system, the lease will be used for adding a laptop cart as well as updating staff computers.

The board also looked at a first draft of the 2012-13 budget. As it stands now, 371 students are enrolled with Area 30 for the upcoming year.

No decision was made on the draft budget. It is expected that the board will make a decision during the June meeting.

The board also approved an increase in lunch prices for the upcoming year, prices will now be $2.40 as opposed to the $2.25 for the current year.

This price increase comes from the USDA via the Indiana Department of Education.

The board approved seven new courses to be taught at South Putnam High School during the upcoming school year.

Among the courses are Computers in Design and Production, Introduction to Advanced Manufacturing and Logistics, Introduction to Communication, Introduction to Communication, Introduction to Construction, Introduction to Design Process, Introduction to Engineering Design Non PLTW and Principals of Engineering Non PLTW.

Comments
View 1 comment
Note: The nature of the Internet makes it impractical for our staff to review every comment. Please note that those who post comments on this website may do so using a screen name, which may or may not reflect a website user's actual name. Readers should be careful not to assign comments to real people who may have names similar to screen names. Refrain from obscenity in your comments, and to keep discussions civil, don't say anything in a way your grandmother would be ashamed to read.
  • I'd like to to see Area 30 privatized with some of the money coming from the state. Not one penny in funding should come from property taxes.

    -- Posted by mickhamblen on Thu, May 10, 2012, at 12:24 PM
Respond to this story

Posting a comment requires free registration: