Following are the responses to the Sherman Middle School case study received from Technology Institute participants at the Washington, DC Improving America's Schools Conference.
1. Identify the critical issues that most impact this school (what are the school's strengths and challenges?).
Strengths:
- History of low staff turnover (permanency of training investment)
- Low teacher turn-over of staff
- Special Education Instruction - 25% of the staff (gives focus on multimodality needs), one of which is willing to facilitate change through PD
- Full complement of Spec Ed teachers
- School is relatively new, 5 yrs. old
- Possesses hardware and has Internet access
- The school has a good start on technology
- Computers are fairly new, 3 yrs.
- Have Internet-connected computer lab and to each classroom
- Has closed circuit TV (is it connected?)
- Every classroom has closed circuit TVs
- Have access to some peripheral technology
- Significant self-identification of professional development in technology!
- Have a couple of teachers who are enthusiastic about the use of technology
- District Tech Coordinator created competency profile based on State Tech Standards
- Reading test scores above average for like schools, but not to district or state level
Challenges:
- Provide staff training to integrate the use of technology for teaching and learning
- To develop a specific professional development plan that addresses student and teacher needs
- Don't have a professional development plan clearly defined. Tech plan is mainly hardware
- Lack of administrative support for technology
- Student to computer ratio is high (approx 10:1)
- Good hardware, but insufficient for student population
- High staff apathy for use of technology
- Lack of confidence of teachers (even though they have technology at home)
- More than half of the staff are at the Insufficient or Developing stage on the Self-Assessment
- Very few rate above Level 2
- At least 80% of the teachers are at an elementary level of technology competence
- District Coordinator designed 12-week optional training program
- Insufficient computers in the classroom for student access and connectivity is limited
- Only one computer per classroom
- Help teachers understand the benefits of technology in specific course areas
- Lack of knowledge of assistive technology
- Need assistive technology, but do not have funding source
- How to meet the assistive technology needs of disabled children
- Help teachers understand the applicable technologies that will impact their content specialties
- Low math and reading test scores
- High percent of students with disabilities
2. What appear to be the staff's greatest needs towards effective technology use?
- Re-evaluate technology plan on an on-going basis (at least annually). Plan needs to address more than hardware, but should take into account the professional development requirements
- Need cohesive plan for professional development training
- PD plan needs to determine the amount of professional development needed and create a standardized format
- Need time to learn new skills and processes
- Need adequate staff to mentor other teachers
- Incentives for teachers to participate
- Need more collaboration between District Coordinator and teachers to create the plan
- Demonstrate the relevancy of technology in the classroom
- Need administrative commitment to ongoing staff development that supports the integration of technology into the curriculum
- Achieve administrative buy-in; identify and support building "champion"
- Increase teacher buy-in to the value of technology
- Need to build confidence and technology basic skills
- Address how to apply technology
- Develop an awareness of the usefulness of technology as a teaching and learning tool, develop interface skills
- Dedicated technology support staff on site
- Need to gather information targeted to content area selected for focus (reading & math) to include a broad range of skill levels
- Improve contact, comfort as related to pedagogy
- Skill integrating technology into curriculum (based on responses to application, research, problem solving and product development and teaching methodology survey items)
3. Develop realistic objectives for this school (be sure these objectives are measurable)
- To raise the number of faculty members who rate themselves in level 3 and 4 by 10%
- By the end of the school year, 70% of the teachers will be at Level 3
- Focus on bringing staff from Level 1 to Level 2 over a six month period
- By the beginning of the coming school year, 1:3 mentor-teachers will be selected, trained, and ready to mentor
- Since a social studies teacher is willing to be a leader, begin with the social studies dept.
- Work with social studies dept. on integration of technology into the curriculum. Improvements can be measured by current survey instrument, student demonstration of projects, social studies dept meetings, measurement via student products, teacher self-report survey improvements
- Allocate 4 technology oriented staff development days per year, including providing subs to cover teachers' regular duties (helps to prove administrative support)
- Each teacher should have several hours of staff development per week to focus on raising competency level in usage, application, and research
- Develop a plan that uses technology to improve math and reading scores
- Establish a timeline for the development and implementation of a plan that uses technology to address identified needs
- Develop a plan that address the special needs of the students in this school
- Develop a plan to use assistive technologies to support the special learning needs of these students
- By the end of the coming school year, identify assistive technology and submit for implementation
4. List some strategies you would employ to meet the objectives (consider both what's already working and what needs to be improved).
- Develop a staff retreat, experience lab, to explore content issues and applications of software by vendors/developers
- Create collaborative partnerships with other educational institutions and/or businesses to supplement resources
- Based on training plan above, allocate four technology-oriented staff development days per year, including providing subs to cover teachers' regular duties (helps prove administrative support)
- Identify and support technology-using teachers as mentors for other teachers
- Solicit and identify technology mentors; define their role and provide adequate training; provide enough release time for them to work with technology teams
- Provide professional development for the Special Ed teachers and assistants to learn how to use assistive technologies with their students
- Provide release time during the regular school day
- Create release time during the day
- Locate nearby institutions or online resources to match training needs
- Provide a take-home computer for those who do not have computers at home
- Create learning groups with a mixture of proficiency levels and work toward a common goal
- Attend workshops and conferences as needed
- Use the existing technology lab to access available online skill development materials via the Internet for improving teacher technology skills
- Example of each day (based on self-assessment & identified competencies)
- DAY 1 - Introduction to computer operation and basic troubleshooting (presented by Sara & identified teachers)
- DAY 2 - Presenting
assistive technology options for ALL teachers, regular and Special Ed (delivered by out-of-the-district assistive technology specialist
- DAY 3 - Strategies for effective use of technology into YOUR lessons (delivered by Sara and likely out-of-the-district consultant). This will require preliminary research to gather two or three sample "typical" lesson plans)
- DAY 4 - Jazz up your lesson! PowerPoint, multimedia, and the Internet into the classroom (delivered by Sara and identified teachers)
- Model teaching technology lessons
- Test software and appliances to make sure they meet the assistive needs of the Special Ed students; create a budget and seek funding sources for devices; obtain attaining devices and train teachers to use the devices
- Research available software for improving reading and math skills to deploy in the technology lab for student use
- Daily intravisitation (during preps, lunch) to observe the more skilled integrators of technology in the teaching/learning process
- Employ technology for administrative tasks such as record keeping and communicating with students, colleagues, and parents
Do not have faculty meetings. Teachers must check their email for information
5. Identify criteria for measuring the cusses of your plan (what evidence will you look for?).
- Re-administer the teacher self-assessment survey to show progress with skills improvement
- Retake the self-assessment and look at the results
- Look to see if 35 teachers scored at Level 3 or better
- Create a hands-on skills test to test Level 3 skills
- Look at the number of additional college credit courses that have been taken
- Track the number of teachers participating in training sessions
- The number of lesson plans with technology components will increase
- Increased teacher use of technology, including how they are using it
- Monitor student reading and math scores to determine the success of software applications
- Count the number of mentors in place to see if ratio was met
- Document the training given to the mentor
- Create and administer a survey to teachers on mentor effectiveness
- Have mentors identify their strengths
- Collect satisfaction/value surveys after individual events (e.g., full-day PD session)
- Track the number of hours of professional development/technology training per teacher over the span of the timeline proposed above
- Track the percentage of instruction that special needs students receive in an inclusive environment to determine the successful use of assistive technologies
- Increased use to facilitate teaching an learning (evidence includes student work that utilized technology; teacher use of machines fro communication and teaching and learning activities)
- Create rubrics for evaluating teachers' projects that were developed as an outcome of a workshop/series of workshops
- Increased use to facilitate teaching and learning (evidence includes student work that utilized technology; teacher use of machines for communication and teaching and learning activities)
6. What kinds of data will tell you if you've met the criteria and how might you collect that data?
- Self-assessment scores
- Observations of technology use
- Observations (principal walking by classrooms to see if computers are on; observation of posted work)
- Access logs for email (e.g. like Norwich, CT where it can be seen when folks had accessed email within 24 hours)
- Monitor Internet/email usage statistics such as teacher use of email, hits to Reading/Writing websites that are recommended on district website, etc.
- Mentor reports
- Survey results
- Teacher survey collected: beginning, middle, end of year in staff meetings
- Interviews (volunteer teachers)
- Looking at correlations with student performance and the use of technology
- Student use of technology as a result of teachers becoming more proficient
- Student work (social studies fair, etc)
- Involvement with parents (open house, etc) to see if students use technology in classroom. Have parents participate in a survey to assess level of satisfaction