Louisville, KY – Kentucky schools recently participated in industry-standard technology support training, earning over $1,000,000 in advanced student computers as part of the statewide Dataseam partnership.
Dataseam, an education and workforce development initiative supporting Kentucky districts since 2003, provides student workstations as part of state and federal funding designed to address the “digital divide” many Kentucky K-12 districts face. The Apple desktops earned as part of improving the state’s technology workforce support advanced curriculum but also provide number-crunching horsepower to the cancer research efforts of the University of Louisville’s Brown Cancer Center.
Thirty-five technology support professionals employed by twenty-one Kentucky public K-12 schools undertook the week-long training, designed to improve technology skill sets and improve employment outcomes and credentialing for participants.
“The folks we prepare support a diversity of IT demands for one of the Commonwealth’s largest employers, public education.”, said Brian Gupton, Dataseam CEO. “The training and certifications these individuals obtain improve Kentucky’s technology workforce sector, as well as providing participants the chance to improve employment and advance professionally.”
Schools receive vital technology supporting curriculum reflecting next-generation needs making local investments to improve instructional and technology teams. Districts determine where the needs to be met are most; Dataseam workstations create new labs, technology clusters to support innovative instruction in the classroom, new teacher workstations. Computers earned allow schools to provide diversity of devices and operating systems students use when they graduate and move to university and workforce opportunity.
Superintendent Charles (CD) Morton, Harlan Independent Schools relates, “The workstations earned through Dataseam in the last six months would have taken seven and a half years for us to fund otherwise. I’ve been working with Dataseam since I was our district’s head of technology. The return on investment from the Dataseam partnership may be the largest of any initiative Harlan Independent executes. To move the needle on student outcomes and workforce development for the Harlan community requires a level of commitment, but the impact for our students and staff makes it an easy lift.”
Harlan Independent has earned over $700,000 since 2006 in the unique Kentucky partnership improving the education offering provided across their entire school district. “Dataseam is vital last-mile funding and opportunity for many school communities like ours”, continues Morton.
Dataseam currently serves 52 of 171 Kentucky public schools. Over 200 individuals have been professionally certified to support Apple technologies in Kentucky. As a result, Kentucky has the largest active single cohort of Apple systems engineers in the United States.
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