Editor's Note: Samantha Perkins interviewed Salisbury Township School District Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning Dr. Randy Ziegenfuss and Coordinator of Technology Christopher Smith Aug. 16 as part of her graduation project at Salisbury High School. Perkins is interested in journalism and is job-shadowing at The Press for her project.

During the summer, Salisbury School District has been busy updating the school's technology.

"It's been a very stressful summer," Coordinator of Technology Christopher Smith said.

The district replaced the existing Apple MacBooks with new Apple MacBook Pros, causing the technology department to fix, clean up and sell the old laptops and get the new computers ready for students to pick up this month.

"There was a lot to go through," Smith said. "There were about 1,500 [MacBook] computers, [and] we had to repair about 1,000 of them. We got about 1,765 new [MacBook Pros] and 165 iPad minis and we had to program all of them to fit the district's needs." However, the technology department didn't do it all alone.

"We [had] four summer help students. We had them work through the imaging process, [they] cleaned projectors, helped with rollout… There's no way we could have done it without them," Smith said.

Along with the new computers, the district also extended a device to every student in the district. Students in kindergarten and first grades will be using iPads to enhance the educational experience and students in second through fifth will have a laptop to use in school only as the teacher incorporates the laptop into the learning experience.

"Three years ago the district implemented TL2014, enabling students in grades six through 12 to each get a laptop to take home," Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning Dr. Randy Ziegenfuss said. "This year, we got rid of all the old computers and got new computers."

"We're the only school [district] in the area doing 'one to one' in grades K-12," Ziegenfuss said. "The kind of learning experience young children value the most are a mix of things including computers, guests, field trips, discussions and debates. The technology is enhancing the different types of learning, but it will not be replacing. They will not be sitting in front of a screen all day," Ziegenfuss said.

Ziegenfuss also said there is a filtering system in place on the equipment which is a federal law for both schools and libraries. He said with so many students having access to technology, it's necessary. While students are at school, applications such as Skype and iMessage are disabled and social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube are blocked. YouTube EDU, however, can be accessed while at school. Most apps and websites can be accessed at home unless a parent requests them to be blocked. The forms are available for parents by visiting www.TL2020.org.

"The filtering system hasn't changed from last year to this year for students at home," Smith said.

Students do have the capability of requesting websites to be unblocked, but the request should be for a legitimate reason.

"Requests to unblock websites can become cumbersome to go through. You do find some legitimate requests, but it's difficult to weed through all the illegitimate ones," Smith said.

With new technology comes new systems and programs. One new system the district is utilizing is called Casper. Casper is a system enabling the technology department to push out district-approved programs and updates to each laptop at once allowing students the ability to access and update the programs themselves. Previously, any updates to software on the students' laptops had to be done by a computer technician.

"Last year, testing was changed halfway through the year with the state and technicians had to load the update onto a flash drive and load every computer," Ziegenfuss said.

As a side note, Ziegenfuss said students in grades three through eight said they prefer taking tests with paper and pencil and students in the high school said they preferred using technology for tests.

Casper not only frees up the computer technicians' time and allows them to work on fixing computers or other technology in the buildings as an Apple Authorized Service Provider, but also helps students and teachers alike if there is ever a circumstance where a program has to be updated on every computer in the building. Taking on repairs for other providers will also generate revenue for the district.

Casper also gives the ability to shut down apps completely in the school setting.

"There was an issue in the past where Skype was blocked with the filter system, but students were still able to access it by changing the application name, enabling it to work. Now, we have the ability to shut it and other applications like it down completely, regardless of changing names," Smith said.

The system also has a program called Focus. Teachers can access Focus and lock down every application and button on each device except for the application they would like their students to be using. This can especially benefit the elementary students who will be using iPads and laptops more frequently in the classroom.

Additionally, the elementary schools have new math programs. The students will get a math textbook, but there will also be additional software and an online textbook to accompany it. There is also new math and reading assessment software the district purchased last year.

Ziegenfuss said the district will continue to measure the success of the program by frequent surveys of parents, students and teachers and will continue to conduct classroom walkthroughs with teachers and administrators to gauge and assess how the technology is being used.

The district will also have students save documents in the Google drive application which is less expensive and allows for more storage. It will be easier for students to access their files from anywhere.

Another cost saving measure by the district is the savings in paper and toner. Smith said a print management system was put into place where, for example, last year 83,000 users clicked "print" to print documents. The user then goes to the printer to actually print their document from the queue. If a person does not go to the printer, the system deletes the document after 72 hours. Last year, the district saved $8,310 in printing costs alone– considering the system was $4,500, the district is pleased with the system which only costs $250 a year to maintain.

With the district making great strides in technology, it's hard to imagine what could be next, but Ziegenfuss has some ideas.

"Well, I think [the next step for the district is] the learning process becomes much more personalized and much more customized. Right now we're in a system that's very standardized and has to follow state requirements. But what if the student wants to take a free online college course? Or wants to learn a different language we don't offer?Or take a course on a field of study we don't have in school? We have the technology to give these opportunities to the student, the question is, how do we take the students' interests and use the technology we have to enable them to go after these interests and make them count? I think that's the next step for the district."