If you remember using chalkboards while you were in school, then the technology students are using today could make you seem like you may as well have rode a horse-and-buggy to class each day, too.

With the traditional chalk and blackboard long gone and even whiteboards going the way of the 8-track, the Austin Public School District is gradually transferring to new technology to ensure students and even staff have the best equipment on the market today.

Over the summer, 11 new Smart Boards were installed at Ellis Middle School, and many more were interspersed throughout the district.

The school has been using the interactive whiteboards for a few years, but now almost every classroom has the tool.

“We’re able to use it just like a whiteboard, and save it,” explained Eric Harder, a pre-algebra and algebra teacher at EMS.

When Harder started at the school a few years ago, his room was the only one with a Smart Board, which allows teachers to save and print graphs, utilize three-dimensional graphics and pull up information from the Internet — all by touching the projected screen.

“The resources that we have are amazing to be able to find,” Harder said.

The teacher also has access to an Airliner, a mobile Smart Board that can be used in auditoriums or other situations where a bigger screen is needed. The district is looking to get Smart Board lessons online, so students can access them at home to study.

Smart Boards are just a small segment of the district’s continuous technology cycle; computers are rotated in each building as part of the five-year computer replacement plan.

At EMS, 250 new Dell computers were installed over the summer; 145 were funded by the Hormel Foundation. Each summer break, the technology department is busy not only district-wide with technology updates, but putting new computers in the schools, which rotate every year. Next summer, Austin High School, the last building in the first five-year cycle, will receive new computers. The summer after that, the cycle will begin again with Banfield and Southgate elementaries getting new computers.

“The idea is, a computer is used for five full years and it’s replaced,” said Tony Campbell, technology services coordinator. Some computers are stored for spare parts or for temporary lab setups, particularly online state testing.

Also over the summer, every classroom at Woodson Kindergarten Center received a projector.

“We’re seeing a move away from televisions as well,” Campbell said. Projectors can be hooked up to computers and allow for a bigger screen.

When new equipment is needed in the schools, it is a huge undertaking, he said. The technology and information departments, which employ a total of eight people, are busiest during summer “vacation.”

For instance, if the district wanted to transition to the Vista operating system, it would take a summer’s worth of installations, licensing and testing to make sure all buildings are in line — one reason the possibility may be a couple years down the road.

“It’s nice to have things standardized across the district,” Campbell said.

Over this past summer, the district installed 350 pieces of new technology, from printers to computers to Smart Boards.

“We hear from teachers who have come from other districts they feel very fortunate to have up-to-date technology and computers,” Campbell said.