of 2010. The remainder were deployed in Au- gust 2011.


n Digital Textbook Initiative Imple-


mentation: RUSD continues to be the leader in Cali-


fornia’s move toward digital textbooks for all. We began the process in 2009-10 and continue to expand their use. By the open- ing of the 2011-12 school year, all grades 7-12 campuses will have access to – or will be implementing – digital textbooks across their campuses.


n Grassroots development of open ac-


cess within the district: In addition to the official pilots, grants


and collaboration going on in the district, there are literally hundreds of smaller grass- roots efforts including providing open ac- cess to special education, English learner and other traditionally underserved popu- lations. Schools without categorical funding are embracing open access by leveraging the resources available to their communities.


Open access vs. lock and block As we looked at our intended outcomes


(providing access to technology and high quality online resources that allows for ex- tended learning opportunities and student- paced education), we recognized several problems. Even in healthier budgetary times we were unable to provide these resources to our students and knew that we certainly could not do it using the same systems in the worst budgetary climate ever. But as we examined our existing policies,


we realized that we really had two problems: a digital divide, with a part of our population having little or no access to technology, and other students who had to “power down” to come to school. We soon recognized the foolishness of confiscating student technol- ogy (everything from iPods to Smartphones and beyond) while at the same time agoniz- ing over how we could provide that very technology. We implemented a philosophy we call


“open access,” which has two main compo- nents. The first is to allow students to bring


their devices into our system for use as an educational tool. The second is taking the re- maining resources to provide for those who do not have technology or Internet access. Unfortunately, the attitude of “lock and


block,” where access to technology is con- cerned, is very entrenched in K-12 educa- tion. The lack of research-based evidence in student growth using technology is under- standable because in most cases, students are not using the technology on a regular basis or are using technology that has so many re- strictions that it is of no value to them. We realized right away that students who


had their own technology used it 24/7 and personalized it so it was both a toy and a tool. We needed to provide that same access to students in order to maximize the engage- ment of students and take advantage of the limitless opportunities of online teaching and learning.


Online learning management Our outcome was to provide access to


technology and high quality online re- sources that allowed student-paced educa- tion. We soon realized that we really did not care what type of device was used or who provided it as long as students/parents could get to our online resources. We use an online learning management system called Haiku, and are working with Google to provide a place on the Internet where all students and parents can access teaching and learning re- sources. We also understood that we could not use


the existing technology management and support systems in this new world of open access. Students with their own technology were providing their own technical support, and by simply changing some basic policies (giving students the ability to fix and per- sonalize district-owned devices), we were able to drop the loss/theft rate to less than 1 percent on district-owned devices checked out to students, as well as have students pro- vide most if not all technical support on these devices. This has also allowed us to purchase


many different devices, ranging from an An- droid-based seven-inch interactive (touch and pen sensitive) device to, iPods, iPads, Netbooks and laptops ranging in price from


26 Leadership


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