WILMINGTON, MA — Ken Lord, a 25-year veteran of educational technology in public schools, was named Wilmington Public Schools’ Director of Technology and Digital Learning back in May. He began his new role on July 1.
Lord recently took a few moments from his busy schedule to answer five quick questions from Wilmington Apple.
Why did you choose to come to work in Wilmington?
I had been working for Marblehead Public Schools for the past seven years. I was in charge of both technology and facilities there — an unusual combination. I had been hired there in 2012 to take over the technology department. (I had previously been the Director of Information Technology and Network Administrator with the Bedford Public Schools for 19 years.) In 2013, after a change in superintendents, I was asked to help with facilities and transportation, in addition to technology. To handle all three was a lot — it was too much. I wanted to go back to just doing technology.
I started my search over a year ago. [Wilmington Assistant Superintendent] Brian Reagan and I worked together in Bedford for a long time. He let me know about the Technology Director opening here. That sparked my interest in the position. I applied to several positions, but Wilmington’s was always my first choice — its distance from where I live, the community size, and my relationship with Brian were all factors.
I’m really happy to be here. I’ve found administration and staff very welcoming. It’s been a great transition for me to come in here and really hit the ground running. I feel like I’m making an impact already.
Where is the Wilmington School System – technology-wise – compared to its peers?
Wilmington is about par. Everyone is doing one-to-one now. We have a very good infrastructure here with fiber optics between all the buildings and 10 gig network. There’s some updating to do — but that’s always the case. You can never stop updating. There’s always projects to be done.
What are some of the more newsworthy projects OIT (Office of Information Technology) accomplished this summer? And any big projects on the horizon during the 2019-2020 school year?
I want to thank my OIT staff — Nathan Atwater, Meghan Jones, Joe Pino, Dana Burnham, and Trish Volpe. There’s awesome. We accomplished a ton this summer. We deployed 250 new computers across the district. We did all the teacher laptops at the North, West and Middle School. We replaced two labs at the Middle School. We did a bunch of desktops in various places at the North, West and Middle School too. That was the big project this summer.
We’re now heading into some infrastructure upgrades. Town Meeting was very generous to us. We received funding for a new wireless network at the Middle School. We’re working on getting that configured and implemented. We also have some money for some data center upgrades. We’d like to move to the district’s email from Outlook to Gmail, but the phone system is tied to Outlook, so we’re investigating that.
How is the district’s biggest technology initative — the 1-to-1 program –going? When might it expand beyond Grades 6-12? Do you think the day is coming soon where all textbooks will be digital?
It expanded to Grade 6 at the Middle School this year. Grades 6-12 is the extent of the current plan as was defined as I came in. The focus now is two-fold — (1) give more professional development training to the teachers and (2) expand the number of Chromebooks in the lower grades — it probably won’t be a bring your own device, but something cart-based. We want them to have more technology to access. We’re looking at reducing the number of Chromebook carts at the Middle School now that everyone there 1:1, so we will redeploy some of those carts to the Middle School.
We also purchased 85 Chromebooks for the high school to replace some of the aging Chromebooks. These are the loaner Chromebooks that some students use and to supplement MCAS. We’re looking at redeploying some of those to the lower grades as well.
The paperless world will never come. People love their paper. I see great benefit in having electronic textbooks available, but there’s still very appropriate times for traditional paper textbooks. I see a hybrid of both those things. I don’t see us going completely paperless.
Do you feel Wilmington teachers are receiving the adequate amount of training on technology?
There’s multiple ways teachers are receiving professional development — through their own coursework, through Wilmington University, and via CIT Days.
One of the goals I’ve been given is to work with our three Instructional Technology Specialists to find more effective ways to give training. There’s always an ongoing need for training. Sometimes there’s a misconception that the young teachers coming out of college know everything, but they often need just as much training as the teachers here 20 years.
It’s really about effectively using our Instructional Technology Specialists to be in the classrooms — co-teaching, model teaching, assistant teaching — and then celebrating and showing other teachers how that works. I can stand in front of an auditorium of teachers and train until I’m blue in the face, but if it another teacher stands up and says ‘this worked for me in my classroom,’ you’re going to see light bulbs go off. Finding those teachers, getting them trained, and having them share with their colleagues is key.
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