What does information technology in schools look like today?

IOWA CITY — School district information technology departments faced a surge of requests for help as an unprecedented number of students learned online at the start of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

In one week in 2020, the Iowa City Community School District Help Desk received 2,100 support requests as the desk was the first point of contact for a lot of families starting the school year that fall. Historically, support requests stayed below 100.

Information technology employees helped hundreds of families get home internet, which included either a hot spot or internet service at home. Other requests were to help with device repair, account login and questions about how to access online classes.

More than two years later, the Iowa City Community School District continues to see a record number of requests to its Help Desk, said Adam Kurth, the district’s director of technology and innovation. Iowa City schools offer internet access to about 1,450 students, which is about 10 percent of the student body, he said.

The Gazette spoke with Kurth recently about what’s changed — and stayed the same — in information technology in schools since 2020.

Q: Can you reflect back on the beginning of the pandemic and how your department worked to meet the demand?

A: It was a tremendously difficult time. Our demand was through the roof in terms of providing support to people so directly. The nature of the requests we were getting were fundamentally different.

We worked really hard to train our staff to make sure they had the ability to directly address a lot of those requests. We would try to make sure people taking the initial requests have the tools to solve them right away.

I expected that especially after the start of last school year, we would see our demand drop back to something approaching normal pre-pandemic levels. We’re setting records (for the number of requests) for every quarter every year, which surprised me. Our fall quarter this year had the highest ticket volume we’ve ever seen.

Q: What do you see for the future of your information department?

A: One thing that’s probably a permanent change is the need to support learning beyond classroom walls. That was new for a lot of us at the start of the pandemic, but it’s not ever going to go away.

Our world is increasingly interconnected, but at the same time that doesn’t mean that in the classroom environment we’re going to see a shift to all digital. People want more of that personal interaction between students and teachers.

That’s where we’ve seen a backlash with people wanting to step back from digital. It used to be we use technology in the classroom because it was fun and exciting to use, but it’s no longer really that fun and exciting. We have to have better reasons when we implement technology into the classroom.

Q: What are some of the lessons you’ve learned in the last two years?

A: It’s really crucial we have the infrastructure in place to support digital delivery of education materials. We — along with other districts — realized we needed to have a platform that serves as an online classroom for anything a teacher wants to post, including assignments. That’s something we had firmly in place at the secondary level but not at the elementary level. Implementing that was a big lift.

Q: The Help Desk became the first point of contact for a lot of families at the start of the pandemic. What does this look like now?

A: With the transition for most of our students back to the classroom, we’re no longer as frequently the first contact for them. Our support volumes are really high, but it’s easier and more comfortable for most families to make a request through their teacher or school office.

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