Kent School District, the fifth largest in Washington state, covers 72 square miles and educates nearly 25,000 students across 42 schools. The return to in-person learning allowed stakeholders to embrace ongoing adaptation and collaboration. A crucial factor in this success was the use of Surface devices, Microsoft 365, and associated educational tools. These resources support the district's mission to prepare students for their futures by providing modern educational tools that enhance accessibility and digital citizenship, equipping students with the skills needed to thrive beyond high school.
Adopting a college and career-oriented approach
As the Assistant Director of Digital Learning for the district, Melissa Benner plays a crucial role in aligning educational technologies with the district’s goals. With the vast number of students and staff, she and the Kent leadership team needed a comprehensive process to identify suitable devices for their strategic objectives. Melissa explains, "I want every student to walk in the door and have what they need to be able to complete their goals and to have their passions seen and heard. I have always really hung my hat on striving to leverage technology to provide that authentic opportunity for our students.”
Melissa’s commitment to empowering students extended to device selection discussions. The process included feedback from teachers, staff, and administrators, but the Kent School District also ensured student involvement at every level. They conducted activities where students of various ages used different devices to complete tasks and then provided feedback on their experiences. One key feature highlighted through these exercises was digital inking, which became a critical criterion for selecting potential devices.
Joelle Bejarano, Director of Strategic Initiatives for the district, emphasizes, “We were really intentional about engaging our instructional staff members, our students, our families, and a variety of other teams across the district to really understand our constituents’ various needs.”
The stakeholder feedback, including insights from students, led them to choose Microsoft Surface devices. Students valued portability, while teachers, staff, and administrators appreciated the extensive educational tools within the Microsoft ecosystem. Today, students in grades six through twelve use Microsoft Surface Pro 7 Plus devices, and most younger students use Microsoft Surface Go tablets.
College and career readiness feedback significantly influenced the decision to adopt Microsoft Surface devices.
We have a strong commitment to making students college and career ready. Windows and the programs that run on Windows are the predominant platforms you'll find either in college or in a business environment.
Travis Haas, Supervisor for Technology Support Services
Kent School District
Joelle concurs with Travis, adding, “Our first strategic goal is to prepare students to be successful in college, their careers, and in life. So that is a primary consideration that we have whenever we're making selections for hardware, for software and anything in between. We were really intentional about selecting technology that is used within the workforce to ensure our students are prepared to utilize technology in an effective way once they leave our system.”
Utilizing the right technologies to enhance accessibility and digital citizenship
Kent School District’s innovative approach ensures that all students are empowered to share their voices and tackle the complex problems their generation will face in the coming decades. Achieving this empowerment requires a strong focus on access and inclusivity. At their best, educational technologies can break down barriers that have historically hindered some students from fully engaging in their learning environments.
Amber Gonzalez, the Teacher-Librarian and Technology Integration Specialist at Sawyer Woods Elementary School, sees firsthand how students rely on educational technologies with built-in accessibility features rather than those requiring additional software. She contrasts Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, explaining, “Some of our programs initially only worked in Chrome, but now that Edge is better, we fully transitioned to Edge because the accessibility features are so much better. For Chrome, you have to add it on as an extension at every turn, and with Edge, it's all built-in and it's super simple to access.”
I think when we've got kids that need different support mechanisms to learn, the Microsoft assisted learning tools become really, really vital. Last year, I had a student that had dysgraphia and dyslexia, and so being able to listen to the audio was necessary, and the Immersive Reader was essential for the success of this student.
Amber Raftery, a sixth-grade teacher at Ridgewood Elementary School
Amber Gonzalez emphasizes that with Microsoft 365, accessibility and assistive learning features like Immersive Reader are always just a click away. She comments, “It's easy for students to have an Immersive Reader button built-in and available in every program or on every website—that is huge for my students and for me teaching students with different abilities.”
Ensuring that all students have opportunities to engage with the material and share their opinions is crucial, but it also comes with responsibility. For the Kent School District, this means focusing on tools for teaching digital citizenship. Melissa Benner says, “Digital citizenship is building our students’ digital reputations and then also modeling a digital reputation as a staff member. How am I making sure that I have built a space that is inclusive in a digital world?” Joelle Bejarano agrees and adds, “We’ve looked at digital citizenship through the lens of responsibility. What does it mean to impart a sense of responsibility to another person? I think that involves creating the space for them to learn not just the what and how, but also the why.”
Creating digital citizenship involves more than just lectures. Melissa and Joelle note that students learn how to model responsible citizenship by observing their teachers and staff in digital environments. Joelle explains, “We put a lot of priority and investment around cultivating digital citizenship for everybody in our school system—for students and adults. We partner with our adults to create the most enriching learning environments through digital tools, so digital citizenship is a critical facet of our overall technology strategy and creating the space and opportunities for our young and older learners alike to build their capacity around responsibility.”
Community and collaboration through Teams, OneNote, and Power Platform
As the world becomes increasingly connected, the next generation of students will rely on community and collaboration to find solutions that work for people from diverse backgrounds. During the COVID-19 crisis, Kent School District turned to Microsoft 365 to facilitate community and collaboration remotely. Even with the return to in-person instruction, these tools remain a crucial part of the district’s strategy to keep students engaged in learning.
Melissa Benner praises the power of Microsoft Teams: “I think the true value of Teams is allowing us to have a place for collaboration and connection. It builds a central hub where you can hang all your information to empower students. It has access to learning tools, and is something that creates connections between all of us, so you can manage student conversations and explore digital citizenship while learning.”
Joelle Bejarano highlights Teams’ adaptability: “It has been interesting to see the evolution, adaptation, and various scenarios that Microsoft Teams has supported within our district. In classrooms, Teams is used as a learning management system, and I've seen it used within our school-based teams and our district-based teams as a resource for communication and collaboration. I have also seen it used to build community.”
Beyond Microsoft Teams, Kent School District uses OneNote to manage the classroom experience for teachers, students, and parents. Emily Abrams, a third-grade teacher at Jenkins Creek Elementary, praises the app’s value for educators: “OneNote Class Notebook was my everything in remote teaching. Helping kids to use OneNote remotely just made my life so much easier and they were able to do some really amazing things remotely. Now that we are back in person, OneNote is still an essential tool for my everyday interactions with students.”
Similarly, Amber Raftery is excited to explore more possibilities with OneNote: “We are going to create digital portfolios this year using OneNote. This is a fantastic way to assess kids beyond the traditional measures. The students will pick the ‘cream of the crop’ of their assignments place it into their OneNote and then build their portfolio. I am extremely excited to see their OneNote portfolios since it empowers them to take an active role in their assessment.”
Joelle also explains how Microsoft Power Platform enhances collaboration and community within the district: “With Power Platform, our district has had an opportunity to think innovatively about what our processes are and how we use data to support those processes. Power Apps and Power Automate are becoming increasingly impactful tools in how we digitize our various processes, innovate around those new processes, and therefore better leverage the data. Having tools like that has been transformative for our work and how we support our schools.”
As these different voices attest, Kent School District has embraced educational technologies that emphasize preparing students for college and their careers, as well as their ability to engage as digital citizens.
We have a strong commitment to making students college and career ready. Windows and the programs that run on Windows are the predominant platforms you'll find either in college or in a business environment.
Travis Haas: Supervisor for Technology Support Services
Kent School District
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