The Bolles School issued the following announcement.
Preparing four campuses and all classrooms at every grade level for hybrid at-home and on-campus learning is no job for the faint-hearted – especially when the groundwork is uncharted, timing is undetermined and certainties are, not. But the Bolles Technology team took the proverbial bull by the horns and made sure students and faculty were well-provisioned to deliver during Bolles’ most historic school year.
“I’m very proud of the way this all came together – so many people and schools in our area have been reactive to the challenges of learning during a pandemic,” said Bolles President and Head of School Tyler Hodges. “We have not. We have been proactive and this will pay off in the short- and long-term as we support our students, faculty and families.”
Bolles Chief Technology Officer Paul Sollee ’88 led his team in a summer-long advancement of existing classroom technology on all four campuses: the Bolles Lower School Whitehurst Campus, the Bolles Lower School Ponte Vedra Beach Campus, the Bolles Middle School Bartram Campus and the Bolles Upper School San Jose Campus. Enhancements were required for every classroom and meeting space from Pre-K to Grade 12. With 288 faculty and staff members, the IT team’s punch list was robust.
The Bolles IT department includes Tony Shubert, Jeff Williams, Michael Bachman, Allie Sollie-Bailey, Leonardo LoNigro and instructional technology designers Andrew Nation and Gloria Wood.
The team installed a 23-inch monitor hooked to a Surface dock in each classroom. Also added were web cameras on tripods, which were connected to each dock. This allowed all teachers the ability to connect to the system and provide synchronous learning for students learning at-home (10-15 percent of the student population) and in the classroom.
“This allows teachers to monitor their students at-home as well as teach kids in the classroom, and do both at the same time,” Sollee said.
Additionally, IT associates worked individually with each teacher to assess their needs and questions.
“Everybody teaches differently and every teacher’s classroom is different – so we worked hard to meet individual instruction needs,” Sollee said.
The department piloted some of their designs this summer via academic summer programs on campus. Jen Willis’ Life Management class, for example, was a blended model experience with half of the students learning in her classroom and the other half learning from home. The IT department worked with Willis to provide technology and connection that made this set-up manageable. Sollee did the same for Anne Fallon’s summer math camp on the Bolles Lower School Ponte Vedra Beach Campus. Both went “really, really well,” Sollee said. The team continued their planning around those models and invited faculty to observe.
Meanwhile, the IT team also upgraded internet bandwidth between and on all four campuses and increased wireless access points in larger campus facilities.
“We ran our numbers to see what the worst case scenario might look like, we wanted to be prepared for anything that might hit us,” Sollee said.
The team also has been facilitating the sale of Microsoft Surface bundles that take advantage of Bolles’ negotiated discount.
A few weeks into the school year, the hard work and preparation has been paying off. Students and teachers in every grade level – both on campus and at-home – are finding the “new normal” of the classroom experience to be possible – All Things Possible! Thank you to the Bolles IT department for the grace, patience and expert skills they applied to bringing our community together this school year.
Original source can be found here.
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