Pioneer School in Billings, MT

The Technology Committee was formed in the fall of 2002. The committee is made up of teachers, parents, community members and a school board member. The primary purpose of this group is to act as advisors to the school's Technology Coordinator(s) as to how best to budget funds and plan short and long term goals to meet the needs of our students. View our goals here.

2011-2012 News
The first technology meeting of the year was held on Monday, Sept. 19th in Mrs. Russell’s classroom. We were fortunate to have Shaun Brown of Morrison & Maierle (our tech support people) and Desire Caskey (technology personnel from School District 2) with us to field questions, offer suggestions, and provide a fresh outlook in regards to our technological future.

We have begun going over the Technology Plan for our school and will continue to revise and update it throughout the year.

We visited briefly regarding possible fundraising opportunities, grants, and other methods of raising money for technology maintenance and purchases.

It was a great meeting and we hope to see more people there at our next meeting which will be held in January.

We had a wonderfully informative Internet Safety presentation by Dan Vierthaler, F.B.I. and Randi Friez from Optimum. The parents’ only presentation was Thursday, Sept. 22nd in Mrs. Russell’s room. It was a fantastic discussion and hopefully the next time he is available we will have more parents in attendance. On Friday, Sept. 23rd he provided two separate Internet Safety presentations for our students! They were awesome!

We would like to extend a HUGE thank you to Mike Kiekover for getting several computers and monitors donated to our school. Mike and Deb Kiekover then came and helped set up all of these computers. This has been awesome for our school to be able to update several computers! We would also like to thank Justin Hohn for helping set the computers up and Patty Johnson for helping dispose of the old worn out computers. Your help is greatly appreciated!

Some of our accomplishments include:

Getting the school networked and improving access to the Internet
Adding more computers to the classrooms
Purchasing and providing in-service on multimedia software for presentations
Purchasing and providing in-service on new digital camera and video camera
Partnering with the PTA to put TV's and DVD/VCR's in every classroom
Administering annual surveys to Pioneer School families
Troubleshooting problems with existing technologies
Acting as a resource for ideas and services related to technology use and instruction
Setting goals and providing direction for our technology program

Any parent or community member is invited and encouraged to join us when you are able. You don't have to be a computer whiz to be part of this group. Everyone's ideas and input are important and make our program stronger.

Our plan for technology is available at this link: Pioneer School Technology Plan: 2009-2012