Henrico County Public Schools :: Your Administration :: Instruction

Instruction - Technology and Information Services
Lloyd Brown, Director
804.328.5201
lbrown@henrico.k12.va.us

Today’s students live in a digital world and come to school with different expectations and needs. Through the Teaching and Learning Initiative, Henrico’s schools are preparing students for the 21st century providing meaningful instruction and improving academic performance.

Henrico County Public Schools system takes seriously the responsibility of providing students with a quality education and teaching them state-of-the-art technology skills to prepare them for college and the workplace.

Henrico County Public Schools teamed with Apple and Dell and launched the Teaching and Learning Initiative by deploying laptops to all high school and middle school students and staff. The school system’s vision is to close the digital divide by providing computers and Internet access to all students. Henrico’s goal is to demonstrate a new paradigm for teaching and learning that is suitable for 21st century America.

The Technology Department is within the Department of Instruction and is organized to support the Student Information System, One-to-One Computing Initiative, eLearning, Network Infrastructure and Central Operations.

Henrico deployed approximately 24,000 laptops to all students in grades six through 12.
Henrico deployed approximately 3,700 laptops to its entire teaching and administrative staff.
Each elementary school has five Macbooks in each classroom and shared carts equipped with 25 laptops for a total of 9,400 Macbooks system-wide.
Each high school has at least two PC labs offering student access to approximately 800 Windows computers system-wide.
For middle school students, laptop batteries are programmed to last four to six hours per day. Students need to charge their laptop at home each night, but there are stations throughout the middle schools and high schools where students can re-charge their batteries during the day.

Henrico County Public Schools believes in empowering teachers by providing them with a wide variety of teaching tools and resources. Our teachers are certified professionals and use eLearning and textbook resources as tools to teach curriculum based on the Virginia Standards of Learning.

Research supports conclusions that the use of technology, incorporating visual and collaborative teaching practices, promotes student learning. Students now have a direct pathway to rich, diverse and current information that was never before available in the classroom. The initiative gives students and teachers access to content-rich lesson plans developed by Henrico teachers and specialists. Panels of parents, curriculum experts and Internet sources review these lesson plans.

HCPS provides students and teachers with the following eLearning resources to use as part of their educational experience:

Student Information Systems (SIS) HCPS is transitioning from Pearson SMS to Century Starbase over the next several years. The current Student information system developed by Pearson School Systems, Mac School, Win School and Open District, provide HCPS with grading, attendance, scheduling and reporting capabilities.

Virtual Share is a share folder that allows teachers to upload content gathered from various resources. This share folder is housed on the school’s server. Students can drag files out of this folder onto their desktops and complete assignments. Once students complete the assignment, they submit their homework to their teacher’s Drop Box. Students and teachers have access to this resource from the school network only. Both the teacher and student Virtual Shares have folder quotas implemented on them to ensure equitable availability of storage for all users.

Angel Learning’s Learning Management System (LMS) – Angel Learning’s system organizes and provides access to online learning services for students, teachers and administrators. These services include access to learning content, communication tools like blogs, wikis and discussion boards, as well as virtual office hours which employ whiteboards, chats and desktop sharing, assessment tools, and surveys. The LMS also provides a secure testing environment similar to online SOL tests. There is also flexibility to build assessments which include short answer, essay and other types of assessments, as well as import ExamView Pro assessments.

HCPSLink In support of parental awareness of their child’s progress and achievement, Henrico County Public Schools created a custom solution to help parents of students in grades 6-12 get linked to their child’s academic information. This program provides easy access to homework assignments, class grades, attendance, and school/district notices.

ExamView is a product that allows teachers and specialists to create and issue tests electronically. HCPS has employed ExamView tests for many years through single classroom testing up through district-wide, nine week testing using the vendor’s hosted, online solution.

SOL Testing HCPS participates in electronic online Standards of Learning (SOL) testing sponsored by the Virginia State Department of Education using a solution provided by NCS Pearson. Testing consists of a web-enabled system that is intended to help improve Standards of Learning instructional, remedial and testing capabilities of middle and high schools.

NetTrekker offers a search engine that allows students and teachers to search educational resources by SOL number, subject or key word search. The resources in NetTrekker are educationally sound and are reviewed by panels of educators.

Apex offers Advanced Placement teachers instructional activities accompanied with online diagnostics and reports, customized study plans and engaging activities aligned to AP standards.

Holt Online Learning created by Holt Rhinehart and Winston, a well-respected textbook company, is providing Henrico County Public Schools online content for science and social studies. Holt offers our students tools for diverse learning styles. Their online resources provide students and teachers with quick, convenient access to all the resources of printed textbook plus integrated activities for any computer, anytime.

Prentice Hall resources have been adopted, by Henrico County Public Schools, which include access to rich online resources. Prentice Hall is in use in science, social studies and foreign language classrooms.

Beyond Books offers Henrico students great content, links, interactivity, multimedia, study questions, worksheets, graphic organizers, activities and self-assessments that are accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from home or school. Beyond Books offers a three dimensionality that encourages students to delve deeper into the content by providing them with links to more information.

ExploreLearning is a leading K-12 interactive content creator, partnering with major publishers and educational companies to revolutionize the way teachers teach and students learn. ExploreLearning has partnerships with textbook companies such as Houghton Mifflin and McDougal Littell. ExploreLearning's Gizmos are outstanding multimedia simulations that bring life to math and science. The hands-on learning that Gizmos provides, combined with assessment tracking, results in student and teacher success. ExploreLearning offers Henrico a collection of learning modules that allow students to manipulate math and science environments.

Larsons Pre-Algebra is a server-based mathematics program that Henrico teachers individualize to fit their curriculum and student proficiency level. Larsons’ Pre-Algebra consists of 15 modules and each module contains approximately 10 topics. Each topic includes skill-building and problem-solving tutorials, practice and assessment. Students receive a pre-test; the teacher then uses the pretest to make adjustments to the student’s program of study. Once a unit of study is started, students watch an interactive training multimedia file that teaches a particular math skill. The students are then presented with several sets of skill-building problems and real-life application exercises. Upon completion, students are presented with a standardized test that allows their teacher to accurately assess their understanding of the concepts presented.

Quia provides teachers with the capability to create their own interactive games. Teachers create interactive flash cards, matching games, concentration (memory) activities, word search puzzles and challenge boards based on material they are presenting to their students. Quia also offers teachers the ability to create their own tests. Once the students take the test, Quia automatically analyzes the students’ responses, which allows the teacher to provide the students with appropriate prescriptive feedback to ensure student mastery.

The effectiveness of the initiative is being evaluated through student achievement, attendance, standardized test scores, SOL achievement and observation of varied teaching methodologies through qualitative and quantitative measures.

Before sixth grade students receive laptop they are required to go through laptop training. This training ensures students know how to use, troubleshoot and care for the laptop.

Henrico has implemented technology training for the past 10 years in order for our teachers to become well prepared. Laptops are now being used in daily instruction. The Commonwealth of Virginia requires each teacher demonstrate proficiency on specific technology standards.

Staff development is provided at the division and school level in the following ways:

Curriculum writing workshops
Summer Institutes
Teacher Training
Site-based Institutes
A full-time trainer in each high school and middle school
A full-time technical support position in each high school and middle school
Training CDs and Videotapes
Student trainers

Training opportunities for parents are available through schools, the Parent Resource Center and the Adult Learning Center

Each secondary school in Henrico County has its own technical service technician to maintain student and teacher computers.

Each secondary school in Henrico County has its own technical trainer to support teachers and students as they integrate technology into the curriculum. These trainers offer continuous staff development before school, after school and during planning periods. The trainers also visit classrooms, co-teach technology-rich lessons and provide parent training.