Manalapan-Englishtown School District Launches Digital Conversion Plan

Manalapan-Englishtown Regional School District Superintendent John Marciante has announced the district’s digital conversion plan which will unfold over five years. 

Marciante released a statement on the Manalapan-Englishtown Regional School District website explaining the digital conversion plan, which kicked off this September at Pine Brook School. 

“What is required in education is a digital conversion of the instructional environment,” Marciante said in the statement.“The majority of content will be digital in nature and the major source of that content will be on the Internet. Communication and collaboration among students and between students and teachers will also increasingly be done in a digital format.”

Marciante’s goal is to have every sixth, seventh, and eighth grade student learn in a digital instructional environment by September 2017. Additionally, students between fifth and eighth grades will have their own device allowing access to digital content, Marciante said in his statement. The five-year digital conversion plan states that the device will be a Chromebook.  

The district has been slowly planning for this conversion for six years, according to Marciante. Every classroom in the district has a Smart Board, there are 300 iPads in the schools, and each year the district increases the number of document cameras available, the superintendent said. The wireless capabilities have also improved over the years. In 2012, the Manalapan-Englishtown Middle School and Pine Brook School upgraded to a wireless environment that supports a one-to-one computer environment. This upcoming summer all of the schools will become wireless, Marciante said.  

Sixth and seventh grade teachers were provided with Chromebooks this September and 20 extra iPads are now available for classroom use in each of schools that service children in grades one through five. A pilot program will kick off this October as one sixth grade team will be provided with Chromebooks. Teachers will observe the pilot classrooms and determine whether the use of the technology is beneficial and valuable. If the pilot program is considered a success, all new sixth grade students will be provided with Chromebooks next fall, according to the digital conversion plan. 

For a full detail of the digital conversion plan, click here.