The Lawrence school district’s technology program will soon be getting modernized, updating student projects from model rockets and circuit boards to design software and robots.

Plans are in the works to revamp all four middle schools’ technology classrooms — which before were composed of various two-person modules — into Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) labs. The lab at Liberty Memorial Central Middle School is already in place, and labs at the remaining middle schools are scheduled to be added in the next couple years, according to the district’s capital outlay plan.

The new technology lab and curriculum were piloted at Liberty last school year and are in the process of expanding to the other three middle schools. District officials said the program was due for change.

“(The old program) gave you a really quick overview of some different technologies; much of that technology currently is a little bit out of date,” said Patrick Kelly, director of career and technical education for the district.

About $190,000 is budgeted to add STEM labs to South, Southwest and West middle schools in 2018. In the meantime, teachers have already been trained on the new technology curriculum — called Project Lead the Way — and it is being rolled out using the district’s current technology classrooms. Kelly said the district has been intentionally phasing in the new classes in order to gather teacher and student feedback.

“For us, it’s really important to actually work with students on the curriculum and see is it really addressing their needs,” he said.

In addition to the classes at Liberty, Kelly said, some of the new curriculum has been introduced at Southwest and South middle schools and will begin at West next school year. One of the main elements of the curriculum is using technology and multiple concepts to solve problems, such as a class in which students design and build a robot, he said.

“Students are understanding how a gear ratio works, and how electricity and computer programming work,” Kelly said. “There are so many different pieces of technology that go into programing the robots, building the robots, and getting them to do what you want them to do.”

Once the classrooms are updated, the current design of 16 two-person modules will be replaced with more flexible furniture that will enable large groups to work on solving the same problem, Kelly said.

“They may come up with different solutions, but they’re all working on the same problem,” he said. “Because you can learn from how other people have solved the same problem; it’s just a different approach to teaching those STEM skills.”