Imagine a System of Education Technology that serves 650,000 students, 41,000 teachers, 1,300 schools, 176 district offices, 69 secondary vocational schools, 700 family resource centers and the staff of the Department of Education.
Next, imagine that system providing:
• One high-performance, networked computer for every six students
• One high-performance, networked computer for every teacher and an ability to access the network from home
• All teachers with training and support
• Every school with a building-wide, full-function local area network
• Every classroom with at least four to six active network drops delivering data services, Internet and e-mail
• A cordless phone in every classroom
• Video in every classroom
• Instructional software available to every desktop from the network
• Every school directly connected to the wide area network
• Every district office with complete local and wide area networking
• Every district with a standard, fund-based accounting system
And then imagine that education-technology system striving for these goals:
• To ensure equal access to technology for all students, teachers, and administrators
• To enable students to use technology to become independent life-long learners
• To empower teachers to use technology as a tool
• To develop a network for voice, video and data that will connect all computers in every classroom, school and district to global networks
• To prepare Kentucky's children to work in the Information Age
How cool would it be to have an education-technology system like that? Ask any Kentucky educator, because that's what Kentucky has today.
The Kentucky Education Technology Systems (KETS) is a direct result of the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990. Within the work of KETS, Kentucky established a Master Plan and a KETS Implementation Plan that guides the continuing work of the Office of Education Technology (OET). That office provides a deep reservoir of services to a broad constituency of clients throughout Kentucky education, including students, teachers, parents, administrators, school council members, district personnel, finance administrators and KDE staff.
Some of the services OET provides include Electronic Messaging, Financial Management Systems, the KETS Help Desk, extensive Networking and Security systems, Purchasing and Standards services, the Direct Engineering Program and a School Management System for data tracking.
Kentucky's P-12 public school technology system regularly receives kudos from around the nation. Education Week's "Technology Counts 2002" gave the state high marks in technology, particularly for its Virtual High School. Education Week also noted that 81% of Kentucky's teachers use the Internet for instruction. Overall, Kentucky fared better in the rankings than most of its neighbors.
To learn more about Education Technology in Kentucky, please read on…
Visit the Administrative Resources Technology Page.
Visit the Instructional Resources Technology Page.
Visit the Kentucky Virtual High School.
Visit the Kentucky Virtual Leadership Network.
Read the 1992 Master Plan for Education Technology and the 2000 Update to the Master Plan.
Read the "Survey of Technology in the Schools - Status report on Kentucky" conducted by the Milken Exchange on Education Technology.
Check out some Research on Technology Use in Schools.