At this year’s MASA Distinguished Administrators’ Luncheon, 13 new MASA members were inducted into the Winners’ Circle. These members were honored by the Membership Services Committee for initiating a unique, successful program or implementing an innovative idea that has had a significant, positive impact on their school districts that can be used by other districts across the state. This year’s inductees include:

Randy Davis, Athens Area Schools, Region 7

Computers for Learning Program to significantly upgrade educational technology

The Computers for Learning Program to significantly upgrade educational technology Program The Athens Area Schools is in the process of converting its entire District to using Open Source on a Linux Platform; supported entirely by the Computers for Learning Program offered through the US Department of Defense and US Congress.

For the past four years, the technology department from Athens has acquired donated computers (CPUs) and other computer hardware such as switches, routers, servers, and more, through the surplus reserves of the U.S. Military. This has been estimated at over 4.7 million dollars of “real value” to this small rural district. The computers need upgrades before re-deployment in the schools, but the technology department (two full time staff and a host of volunteers) have been up to the task. Every classroom has at least Pentium III-level computers, and each of the three computer labs and two instructional labs have Pentium IV computers. The technology department has also converted two computer labs and most of the school administrators' hardware to Linux machines.

The district chose not to continue purchasing wholesale licenses from Microsoft four years earlier and has been operating in Open Source, a free and robust software solution for any user to access. The transition away from Microsoft Office has been difficult as we shed old habits and learn new ones in Open Source. We are still able to operate Windows-based software and applications through the VMWare portal on the Linux machines. It truly is an affordable solution to providing an up-to-date, challenging computer technology network for the organization.

And what the district is now teaching its students is not how to operate within a proprietary environment, but directly how to operate programs in word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations regardless of the software system provided. In that vein, the middle school computer technology class is breaking new ground. Since 2006, our teacher has been instructing students solely through Open Office. The students have all learned how to build their own Web Sites using Open Source; and over 94% of the eighth grade students for the past two years have met or exceeded the proficiency standards for technology established by the federal government.

Contact Randy Davis at 269.729.5427 or davisr@athens.k12.mi.us