VALDOSTA — The Lowndes County School System was ranked among the top 10 Tech Savvy School Districts in the U.S., in a national survey of schools examining the application of information technology.

In an annual digital school boards survey, conducted by the Center for Digital Education and the National School Boards Association, Georgia school boards took 19 out of 34 top-ten awards nationally, among the three categories separating schools by district size. Top school boards were selected for demonstrating the best practices in applying information technology to better engage their local communities and constituents, and improving their delivery of services and quality of education to public schools. The survey asks in-depth questions about topics such as how technology and data are used in the decision-making process and what strategies the district employs for technology usage in the classroom.

Lowndes Technology Director Al Rowell is pleased about the system’s award, and shared how the school board has worked to reach the nation’s top technology standards.

“Our board agendas and supporting documents are posted online through eBoard, providing a clear line of communication between our board and the superintendent and his staff,” Rowell said. “The community can view the agenda for board meetings at the eBoard site linked off our system Web page. The system makes extensive use of data to influence decisions on programs and the operation of the school district. We have also maintained a system report card to track our progress toward the goals we set and to see how we compare to districts around the state.“

Beyond the school board, Rowell believes that taking technology into the complete school system, (which currently has over 4,200 desktops and laptops in use and a number of school-based and web-based instructional programs available for students and teachers,) has helped administrators and teachers maintain high student achievement.

“We are implementing this year, TestTrax, a secure online tool that will enable administrators and teachers to have access to their students’ test performance data so that they can plan instruction to be more effective,” he said.

“We also use information technology to maintain communications with our students’ parents and the community. ParentConnect provides parents with online access to their students’ individual assignment scores in grades 6-12, and we have an automated system that calls when students are absent and can be used to make announcement calls for our schools and system. Also, our school and system Web sites provide information to the community on events and ongoing programs.”

In recent years, as technology has advanced and become more essential to the classroom and beyond, the Lowndes System is grateful for the community’s ESPLOST support, which has paved the way to the system’s technology advancement.

“In the last three years we have invested over $7 million in technology purchases of hardware, software, training, and support, and our technology program has thrived with ESPLOST,” said Rowell. “Over the last three years, $5.98 million of ESPLOST monies were expended for technology. Without the ESPLOST, we would not have the same caliber educational opportunities for our students and teachers.”

In the year ahead, the Lowndes System looks to continue its technology investment while developing into a complete 21st Century Classroom System.

“Our plans for this year include establishing 30, 21st Century classrooms across our system with SMARTboards, projectors, and dedicated teacher laptops. We are also in the second year of a three-year roll out of teacher laptops for all our teachers,” Rowell said. “Although it’s difficult to anticipate what even three years into the future will bring, I’m hoping to see more interactive classrooms with response systems so teachers can measure student mastery of information at the moment of instruction.”

Looking to the years ahead, Rowell shared his outlook for the future of the system’s technology, as he and Lowndes technology staff work to stay head-and-shoulders above this ever changing wave of information technology.

“In the coming years I anticipate that we’ll see the paper textbook replaced with more of an individual handheld device, like an iPod Touch with text, video, audio and wireless access,” said Rowell. “Our challenge is going to be not only to provide students with knowledge but to teach them how to acquire and evaluate information that grows at an ever-expanding pace.”

The Lowndes County Board of Education was ranked 10th among the nation’s medium school districts (2,501-15,000), and the Clinch County Board of Education was also named and ranked 7th among the nations small school districts (2,500 or fewer students.)