Huntsville City Schools Approves Groundbreaking Move to Digital Learning for All Students

Pearson 1:1 Learning, digital textbooks to help transform education for college and career-ready students.

Huntsville, AL, June 22, 2012 — The Huntsville City Schools board of education unanimously approved Superintendent Casey Wardynski’s bold plan to move the entire school district to digital learning. The significant effort to improve student achievement is set to launch for the 2012-2013 school year in partnership with Pearson.

The groundbreaking plan will overhaul the way Huntsville’s more than 23,000 students are taught with a district-wide 1:1 Learning initiative which will incorporate the newest technology into day-to-day instruction. Huntsville City Schools is one of the largest school systems in the country to go digital in every school.

“The American education system, for the most part, is run the way it was over 100 years ago, before mankind flew in an airplane, much less flew in space,” said Superintendent Wardynski. “This shift to digital learning in Huntsville schools is nothing less than a journey to a new frontier in education.”

Huntsville teachers will now be able to infuse interactive texts, videos, animations and other features from Pearson digital instructional programs into their lessons to make them more engaging and personalized for each student. Pearson technology will provide assessment tools that determine in real-time each student’s level of performance to help teachers quickly identify academic strengths and weaknesses and provide assignments customized for the student’s level of understanding.

“Educators in Huntsville are ready to continue this city’s tradition of blazing new trails, using technology to enrich the learning experience in a way never before possible,” said Scott Drossos, Senior Vice President of Pearson’s 1:1 Learning. “We will work side by side with Superintendent Wardynski and his team to help Huntsville schools make the move to digital as they prepare students for college and the technology-driven workforce of tomorrow.”

Under the plan, Huntsville schools will integrate all student achievement data and learning progress into a single environment available remotely anytime and anywhere. This real-time data will allow teachers and school district leaders to make instructional adjustments for the needs of each learner, while allowing students to constantly monitor their own progress toward meeting rigorous academic standards such as Common Core.

Huntsville City Schools will work with Pearson to apply a research-based 1:1 Learning Framework to help train and support teachers and staff over the summer and through the year with the shift to a digital learning environment. During the transition school year, teachers also will have access to a classroom set of print textbooks.

“The new digital learning environment will allow Huntsville schools to provide 24/7 access for students and teachers—at last doing away with the traditional boundaries of time and space that hamper old-style schools,” Superintendent Wardynski added. “This very significant change in how children are taught and learn will take a lot of hard work by our teachers, our administrators and staff, and our community, but if we work together effectively, this effort will be well worth it for our students.”

Pearson 1:1 Learning works closely with school districts making the transition to digital learning with instructional programs on laptops, iPads, and other devices.

Pearson is powering the digital transformation of America’s schools with a wide range of mobile learning solutions for schools like those in Huntsville. Pearson’s digital solutions are built on decades of expertise and research in effective teaching and learning, are coherent with the new college and career-readiness standards, and enable districts to improve outcomes by personalizing student learning at an unprecedented scale.

About Pearson

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