As the Feb. 9 ballot deadline draws near for the Federal Way School District technology levy, it is time to look at what has been done with the last levy — and how the district plans to move forward.
The 2004 technology levy was the district’s first ever, a $10.8 million levy.
At the start of the levy, the district had one computer for every 12 students, basically two to three computers per classroom. The district claimed many of those were also outdated and barely usable. The district also did not have the capabilities for students to go online at school to complete their work.
Student-to-computer ratio
That first tech levy had a main goal of providing one computer per eight students. Currently, the district estimates it has one computer per every five students, better than its original goal and due mainly to keeping computers as long as possible.
The district currently has about 4,500 classroom computers updated and networkable. Computers are now scheduled to be replaced at a 20 percent cycle, roughly every five years.
In addition, according to presentations made to the school board, the 2004 technology levy has allowed the district to upgrade 33 percent of the oldest servers each year and 50 percent of the oldest mainframes every other year.
The district plans to use the 2010 levy to continue this upgrade cycle.
Bringing technology into the classroom
One goal was to have a standardized online grade book. The district was able to get this up and running and also purchase software to create a centralized library system that follows the students from school to school.
Document cameras, which are used at almost every school board meeting, have been brought into classrooms last year with the Elmo image viewing systems.
The district has also brought about several piloted learning programs including Discovery Education and Atomic Learning. The district will continue to pilot projects at schools and bring those that are successful into implementation district-wide.
• A faster system
The district also finished its upgrade to a fiber optic system this past fall, bringing high-speed Internet to all the schools and allowing backup data to be completed within two hours, rather than the 24 hours it had been taking.
The Fiber Network brought the bandwidth from 1.5 to 500 Mbps (megabits per second).
The 2010 levy would bring in wireless access.
Technology changes in the past 50 years
• 1952: Liquid Paper
• 1952: Floppy disk
• 1955: Hard drive (IBM)
• 1956: Video tape recorder
• 1958: Communications satellite
• 1961: Human space flight
• 1963: Computer mouse
• 1969: Video cassette
• 1970: Pocket calculator
• 1979: Walkman
• 1982: CD player
• 1983: Internet (the first TCP/IP network)
• 1984: Portable CD player
• 1985: Graphing calculator
• 1990: World Wide Web
• 1995: DVD player
The last decade:
• The BlackBerry was introduced in 1999.
• The iPod was launched in 2001.
• Facebook was introduced in 2004, and Twitter in 2007.
• Ten years ago, AOL was the most popular Internet provider.
• HDTV came about in the past decade, according to an article by CBS. The cheapest high-definition TV sets were selling for more than $6,000 in 1999. Back then, Windows 98 was the most recent software.
• The Amazon Kindle was first released in 2007.
