The Kuna School District is a rural district 20 miles southwest of Boise. Although Kuna is primarily a farm and agriculture community, many who work in high-tech industry in Boise and surrounding towns, for companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Micron Electronics, and Micron Technology, have opted to live in Kuna, and send their kids to the Kuna School District.

Kuna School District's commitment to educational technology began in 1992, when district funds were committed to begin installing local area networks in its schools. Over the next 6 years, all schools, and all classrooms in the district were wired for Internet access through the building LAN.

Integration into classroom teaching started slowly, and has exploded in the past two years. In 1994, the district started a pilot project, where 2-3 teachers per building were given a bank of 5 computers per room, and were asked to experiment with using technology in their teaching. Today, all elementary classrooms in the district have 3-6 computers, and all secondary classrooms have at least one computer, with access to more in shared labs.

The district has a structured professional development plan for technology integration, which allows teachers to choose from a wide variety of training and development opportunities, including both technology skills and classroom integration strategies. Teachers can choose from after-school technology classes, student-teacher mentorships, help from teacher integration specialists available in each building, and informal help from grade level or department technology coordinators.

The district is committed to continual needs assessment and evaluation of the technology program, including evaluating the impact of technology use on students and teachers. Starting this year, a specific plan is in place to yearly evaluate the impact of technology on student learning. At this point, evaluation efforts are rudimentary, but with more training and practice, the district expects to have valuable data to share with other districts on the benefits of technology integration.

The goal of the Kuna technology program is the same as that of the district - that all students will achieve their highest potential. We believe that educational technology, appropriately used, has the potential to motivate and challenge students to not only achieve their highest potential while in our care, but to become competent, life-long learners.