Union County College Corner Joint School District technology director Jim Migoski and technology coach Monica Hofmann presented an update to the school board on new technology in the schools at its April 11 meeting.

Hofmann reported the new Command Central system is being rolled out to administrative staff. Command Central provides an overview of a variety of data dashboards providing information about the district as well as available information on surrounding districts. A similar dashboard system, Pivot, has been implemented for teachers.

Migoski talked about the interactive flat panels being implemented in the district. The tech department has been experimenting with interactive flat panel displays since 2016. A few panels were purchased each year to test and review. Hofmann explained grant funding allowed the district to expand the program to bring panels to more classrooms. The tech department went shopping and reviewed several different display models before settling on ViewSonic's ViewBoard. The district purchased 40 in 2021 and plan to purchase an additional 17, putting a display in each classroom. 

Cybersecurity has been an important focus for the tech department over the past year after some regional districts were victims of hacking. Efforts to refresh network hardware, implement multifactor authentication, train staff to stop phishing attacks and purging old email addresses have helped to ensure security of the district's networks. 

The district has improved connectivity between the College Corner Union School and the Liberty campus by running a dedicated fiber optic line. The previous connection provided by Frontier proved unreliable with frequent outages. The new line has proven to be significantly more reliable. The tech department is still offering Wi-Fi mobile hotspots for students and staff to check out if they are unable to access the internet from home.