Grant helps fund distance learning center upgrade
12/22/2015
PLUM CITY -- The Plum City School District is one of six districts in this region to benefit from the recent award of a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) grant.
Plum City’s share of the nearly $200,000 total in interactive video classroom equipment will be used toward the first major upgrade of the local distance learning center in its approximately 20-year history, according to Principal Paul Churchill. It regards the Northern Lights interactive television system (once known as West Wing), which offers two-way audio and video, Churchill said Thursday.
“We use it mostly for foreign languages,” he said about the system enabling participating schools to take advantage of a teacher based at one location and small groups of students at several others to make a particular subject available. Due to insufficient student numbers at any one of those locations, arrangements for certain subjects wouldn’t be economically feasible without this combination approach, in many cases.
The principal said there will now be a complete upgrade of the center at Plum City Schools, including new computer components, monitors, TVs, document cameras and more. This is all possible because of the presence of fiber optics locally, he added.
Additionally, the room devoted to the center here will be switched from one seating six students comfortably and no more than nine to a vacant full-fledged classroom, he said. Thus, local students will be able to join in the 50-plus “virtual field trips” offered by the system today. For example, if there’s one being shown on the Battle of Gettysburg, an entire social studies class could be accommodated in that classroom to view it.
A rough estimate of the cost for the project in Plum City is between $38,000 and $40,000, he said. The local school district has responsibility for matching 50 percent of this, but carryover funds in the district’s budget should bring Plum City Schools’ portion down to around $15,000, he explained.
The grant was applied for in June, Churchill said, and the award was announced earlier this month. Cooperative Educational Services Agency (CESA)-11, through which this grant program is being administered, has hired a company to do the installation work, projected to begin this coming February or March.
“It will bring us to a level of technology we expect our kids to have,” he said.
Field trips aside, the system involves an “elaborate schedule” of classes, he said. There’s access to over 100 courses. It’s a way Plum City seniors can take a college class for credit while still at the high school, for instance English 101 or 102.
Among the participants are 39 school districts in the CESA-11 territory, along with UW-Barron County in Rice Lake, UW-Superior and UW-River Falls, he said. Similar networks exist elsewhere around Wisconsin.
Plum City Schools have the longest standing teacher hosting one of the classes on the area network, the principal said. Shaughn Laehn has been recognized for his efforts teaching psychology via the distance learning system.
Other school districts benefiting from the grant are: Clayton, Frederic, Luck, Pepin and St. Croix Falls.
By Bill Kirk