Thornton Township District 205’s Technology Department continues to expand and support the technical resources needed to have the greatest impact on student achievement. Our learning environment must continue to develop the ability to use technology while constructing knowledge, problem-solving, and make decisions about our world today and for the future.

The Technology Department has several initiatives planned for the 2016-2017 school year. One of the initiatives is to pilot a 1:1 initiative with freshmen students. The 1:1 Chromebook initiative is designed to nurture 21st Century skills. The use of Chromebook supports flexible instruction. Supported by a marketplace of third party applications, teachers are better positioned to differentiate based on the unique inventory of each learner. Students can tap into applications and websites to increase available avenues for expression and rely on a multimodal approach to present critical understandings.

In the 2016-2017 school year through E-rate funding, we will be upgrading our bandwidth. With networks experiencing increased bandwidth demands from applications and major rollouts, our bandwidth will increase from 1 GB to 2 GB with the capability to increase to 10 GB.

E-rate funding will be used to upgrade Thornton Township District 205’s infrastructure and backup systems. The upgrade better supports the reliability and secure connectivity of the new devices that will be on Thornton Township District 205’s network.