District CIO

Digital Promise announced that Karen Cator, the former director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education, has been named its new president and chief executive officer.

A 2010 survey from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration found that 22 percent of households with school-age children did not have broadband at home.

Right now, 31 states allow purely online schools, of which about 275,000 students attended in the 2011-2012 school year, according to “Keeping Pace with K12 Online and Blended Learning,” an annual report from the Evergreen Education Group, which works with districts to improve education outcomes through digital learning.

If you're a school or district leader who is considering using education technology and digital learning in your schools, stop. Technology can play a huge role in boosting student achievement, but simply slapping a netbook on top of a textbook is not enough.

At the state SkillsUSA competition, which involved more than 1,100 students, 14 York County School of Technology students took either a first- or second-place win, according to a news release. Four students qualified for the national competition in June.

A House bill that would revamp high school graduation standards and testing requirements was sent to the full Senate on Tuesday. The Senate Education Committee approved the measure after making several revisions that mirrored earlier Senate legislation on testing and graduation standards.

In the ninth annual Digital School Districts Survey from the Center for Digital Education and the National School Boards Association, three school districts received top honors for technology integration.

The technology and education department at St. Michael-Albertville High School (St. Michael, Minn.) received the Program Excellence Award at the 2013 International Technology and Engineering Educators Association (ITEEA) conference, recently held in Ohio.

Don't have enough credit hours to teach a subject in high school? Apply to a Kansas tech school and teach the college course. Yes, some Kansas tech schools have advertised for instructors of general education courses and the minimum requirement is a bachelor’s degree with 24 credit hours of coursework in the subject taught.

The Board of Education is considering three separate policies geared toward improving the use and security of technology in Howard County (Md.) schools: Ensuring the proper security of all technology within the school system, defining the acceptable use of technology with the school system, and determining the proper use of social media among students and teachers.