By Ben Robinson
Staff Reporter

brobinson@thepccourier.com

COUNTY — School District of Pickens County director of instructional technology Dr. Barbara Nesbitt updated school board members about the district’s growing computer program during their meeting Monday night.[cointent_lockedcontent]

Nesbitt said the district is currently trying to help teachers find better ways to use technology.

One goal is to have one person at each school in the district become the trainer for Google applications.

“With all the money we’ve invested in technology, we don’t want to waste it,” Nesbitt said. “We want to be responsible for what we have.”

Nesbitt said the district now has laptop computers for 40 percent of its teachers.

“Hopefully we will be able to finish that this year,” Nesbitt said.

In the elementary schools, the district now has Chromebooks for 25 percent of the students.

“Right at 4,000 Chromebooks,” Nesbitt said.

She noted that the price on Chromebooks is lower than for other brands of laptop computers, and teachers are finding the Chomebooks to be more user-friendly.

Digital textbooks are coming, too, Nesbitt said.

“We’ll have all of our middle-school subjects available online, except for English,” Nesbitt said.

“What we’re looking for next year is we’re hoping to get an online registration program,” she added. “There’s a lot of advantages to that, including saving time.”

Nesbitt said currently the district will get three children from the same family and spend time filling out the same information several times, such as who to contact in case of emergency, while instituting an online registration system would expedite the process.

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