The Mooresville School District, in Indiana, has launched what is being dubbed “the classroom of the future” just in time for the 2020-2021 school year.
The K-12 school district implemented the new unified and collaborative e-learning solution in a matter of weeks and looks to not only meet the needs of teachers and students during the COVID-19 pandemic but also improve classroom learning post-pandemic.
“Setting up e-learning has been a huge challenge for districts all over the country,” said Jake Allen, assistant superintendent for Mooresville Schools. By working with private sector partners, the school district was able to discuss its challenges, as well as its ideal outcomes. Together, Allen explained, they “developed a robust remote learning system that was implemented within weeks, with plenty of room to grow.”
With the new solution, district leaders wanted to construct a “seamless, fully collaborative learning solution” that in addition to meeting immediate needs would also “introduce long-term, creative teaching and learning tools.”
The school district knew that student engagement was the key to success and so they choose a solution that “was powerful and flexible enough to encourage as much interaction between teachers and students as possible.” With the new technology in place, teachers are “unchained from their desks” and can move around their classrooms while staying engaged with their pupils. The new solution also gives schools the ability to record sessions and offer language translations via subtitles within the recorded session.
Looking towards the future, the school district sees a wide array of advantages, including teacher time savings based on the ability to digitally collaborate on and share lesson plans; administrative time savings for future student sick days or district snow days; and a wider range of learning opportunities – such as a Chinese language class taught by an educator living in China.
