Students at Eastern Regional High School may have been taking a break these past few months, but many of Eastern’s staff members have been hard at work preparing for the new year, especially the school’s technology department.
At the head of that work has been Phil Smart, Eastern’s recently appointed vice principal of technology who previously spent the past 11 years at Eastern as the school’s vice principal of athletics.
Smart said a lot of new things have been going on at Eastern over the summer in regard to the school’s technology, and a lot of it has to do with the new bell schedule the school will be implementing. That new schedule will see students operating on a four-day rotating system where, depending on the day, students will be meeting with up to six of the possibly eight classes they could be enrolled in at a given time.
To accommodate such a schedule, the school will also be introducing an hour-long communal lunch period between morning and afternoon classes where all students at the school will be eating at the same time.
That’s just one area where Smart says technology will be playing a big role.
To help cafeteria staff handle the increased volume of students all at one time, Smart said Eastern’s technology department has been installing new cafeteria hardware and software called “LunchTime” that will offer a new payment process for students to hopefully speed up service in the cafeteria.
Smart said the school also took a tip from another school that already has a bell schedule similar to Eastern’s with the installation of new security cameras in the cafeteria to monitor the increased volume of students and help prevent additional theft.
Also related to the new bell schedule, Smart said the school has installed new drops for TV monitors to better inform students as they enter Eastern of what specific day it may happen to be within the new rotation schedule and what their schedule would look like.
Smart said the school installed six new monitors and moved an already existing monitor to a better location.
According to Smart, the information displayed on those monitors will also be run through a feed available on the district’s website, so any student with a smartphone or smart device, or freshmen and sophomores with their school-issued iPads, can access the information at any time.
Smart said the information will also be formatted to present students with countdowns so they know how much longer they have until school starts or when their next class will start.
“That’ll happen through the course of the day to keep them going and knowing how much time they have to get there,” Smart said.
As there is no longer a homeroom period, Smart said the district will also have a new computer program where teachers can use a computer or smart device within range of Eastern’s internet protocol address to digitally confirm their attendance for the day so administrative officials have a better idea of where teachers are as the day starts.
Beyond the new bell schedule, Smart said Eastern has also been working with Apple in preparation for another round of deployment of school-issued iPad devices.
Last year’s freshman class was the first class at Eastern to receive their own take-home device to be used throughout their high school career, and now the program will continue with this year’s freshmen.
Smart said Eastern would be using what’s known as the Apple Classroom program where teachers will be able to monitor what students are doing on their iPad devices with the ability to lock students into certain applications at a given time to keep students focused on their work.
