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San Saba Independent School District was recently notified that the ISD is the recipient of a $500,000 competitive technology grant. The Technology Immersion Strand of the Vision 2020, Cycle 2 Grant Program will provide San Saba High School with a variety of technological enhancements. Included in the technology products will be a laptop for teachers and a laptop for all high school students. As well, teachers will be provided projectors and document cameras. Additionally, the grant provides for student productivity tools such as smartboards and ipods to use during instruction for such things as creating podcasts and for making presentations.

The grant promotes the use of technology in everyday instruction. The long-range technology plan for Texas and at the federal level is directed at preparing students to thrive in the global workforce. Our vision is for our students is to have 24/7 access (on-demand access) to educational tools. San Saba staff feels as educators it is our responsibility to collaborate with our colleagues regionally and across the state in regard to best practices in educational program design. As well, we believe in building capacity within our school and the integration of technology in core content areas for student success. The technology provided by this grant will assist the ISD in meeting our goals.

The Vision 2020 Grant follows in the footsteps of the Texas TIP grant that first provided laptops to students. The research of the TxTIP grant has shown that 1:1 technology immersion demonstrates many benefits to students. Included in these benefits is increased student involvement, improved teacher and student communications, students show more initiative to work independently, a great benefit to students who struggle with writing, students teach one another, students generally undertake higher-level research projects, students who have greater access to laptops and use laptops for learning to a greater extent, especially outside of school, had significantly higher TAKS reading and mathematics scores, students with special needs seem to have benefited the most from the program as it can be tailored to their individual requirements, and principals consistently had fewer discipline problems than control-group students.

Grant activities will cover the 2009 – 2010 school year and 2010-2011 school year. Professional development represents 25 percent of the grant proceeds and the staff of San Saba High School will be receiving this required part of the grant in the early stages. Key staff to be working on this initiative is Harper Stewart, Milly Summy, Judy McCoy, Colleen Womack, Deanne Cromer and Robin Welch.

The ISD has also applied for a grant called the Target Tech in Texas (T3) Collaborative Grant. This grant builds a technology consortium with San Saba ISD, Brownwood ISD, Mason ISD and Ballinger ISD. The $1 million grant would provide technology enhancements for San Saba Middle School as well as establish on-going technology collaboration between member schools and professional development for staff. Notification for this grant is not due until October, 2009.