Articles in the Educational Technology category

In Op-ed, NSBA’s Bryant challenges Duncan’s bandaid fix to NCLB

NSBABryantCall me naïve, but I don’t think the primary purpose of No 3283394_com_arneduncanChild Left Behind was to shame public schools or pave the way for privatization. I believe — and this is just my opinion — that the law’s principal creators sincerely wanted to improve the education of disadvantaged children, and NCLB, flawed as it is, was the vehicle they came up with.

That said, it’s hard to imagine a more breathtaking illogicality than the law’s central premise: That all children, despite their considerable differences, could be taught to a single high standard and that all students would be “proficient” by 2014.

This quote from Arne Duncan’s recent Politico piece on the law is telling:

Despite our shared sentiment for reform and the Obama administration’s long-standing proposal to reshape NCLB, the law remains in place, four years after it was due for reauthorization. Our children get only one shot at an education. They cannot wait any longer for reform.

Read that carefully and you’ll notice the education secretary isn’t talking about reforming schools, but reforming reform. Our children get only one shot at an education, and they cannot wait any longer to reform the reform.

Duncan’s heart is in the right place. He knows the legislation is seriously flawed and has vowed to do, through regulatory reform, what Congress won’t address with legislation. But the Secretary isn’t going far enough — offering merely to be more “flexible” under the same assessment system. That begs the question: If the legislation is so horrendously flawed, shouldn’t there be a moratorium on schools labeled “failing” under that broken system?

That’s exactly what NSBA Executive Director Anne L. Bryant argued last week in a commentary in the Huffington Post:

We need the regulatory relief this summer before school starts, instead of a new bureaucratic process that the Department of Education is purposing that could take many months to create. And as we need this as a matter of policy — not state or school district case-by-case waivers. We specifically support suspension of additional sanctions under current AYP requirements, effective for the 2011-12 school year, so that schools currently facing sanctions would remain frozen; no new schools would be labeled as ‘In Need of Improvement’ or subject to new or additional sanctions.

Lawrence Hardy, Senior Editor

Naomi Dillon|June 21st, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Educational Technology, Governance|Tags: , , , |

District produced video brings awareness, opportunities on study of food

Naomi Dillon|June 13th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Curriculum, Educational Technology|Tags: , , |

TLN site visit shows range of strategies in large, diverse district

Serving nearly 100,000 students, Jefferson County Public Schools in the bluegrass region of Louisville, Ky. was not only the largest but the final school system to host one of three Education Technology Site Visits offered through NSBA’s Technology Leadership Network spring series.

“The site visits have been part of NSBA’s commitment to educational technology since the late 1980s … and they provide a great hands-on opportunity to see, hear and talk with educators that are engaged in using technology in transformative ways,” said Ann Flynn, NSBA’s director of education technology.

As diverse as its student population—about half are minority students and 60 percent receive free or reduced-priced meals–Jefferson County’s integration of technology, as their two-and-a-half day tour revealed, spans an array of subject matter and curriculum.

From a cutting-edge video production studio at Thomas Jefferson Middle School, where broadcasting students learn about electronic publishing, multimedia production, and computerized television to the Humana Fitness Lab, a state-of-the art facility at Wellington Elementary School, where health and fitness is not only fun, thanks the Wii Fit, Playstation GameBikes, and Dance Dance Revolution equipment, but academically enriching as the 2007 and 2008 Mayor’s Top Apple Award for reading achievement shows.

“When you see a district of Jefferson County’s size making concerted efforts across the district for all kids, that’s really impressive because it’s hard to do when you’re that large,” Flynn said.

And while many of the ways Jefferson County has utilized educational technology in the classroom are similar to what other progressive school districts are doing, be it videoconferencing, podcasting, or Web site designing, the school system’s site visit highlighted programs that are fairly unique to them.

Take for instance, Roosevelt-Perry Elementary School, the district’s only grade school technology magnet program where their motto is “Where technology is child’s play,” though what they accomplish is far more elementary.

“The students are exhibiting skills that go far beyond cutting, pasting and coloring,” Flynn said of technology playground rooms where kids create robots or the entries they contribute to their teacher’s blog. “They are really getting the academics though they haven’t taken the fun out of kindergarten.”

On the opposite side of the spectrum is Eastern High School, which boasts a model technology program that consistently rates at the top in the state and in the country. Students there are required to take at least two years of technology courses to graduate and often leave with high-end industry certifications under their belt, which are enough to land them lucrative careers. The program has proven to be so successful that Jefferson County is in the midst of expanding it to two other school sites.

“It was an exceedingly impressive program and it just shows if you put the right kind of program and the right kind of course work in place, you can get kids ready for serious career options,” Flynn said.

Naomi Dillon|May 18th, 2011|Categories: American School Board Journal, Educational Technology|

N.J. district shows how to create a successful 1-to-1 laptop initiative

New Jersey’s Pascack Valley Regional High School District let visitors peek into the inner workings of its successful eLearning initiative through a webinar hosted by the New Jersey School Boards Association and NSBA on May 11.

Pascack Valley, located in the northeast corner of the New Jersey and home to corporations like BMW, Sony, and A&P, was the first of three 2011 Education Technology Site Visits that NSBA’s Technology Leadership Network presented. Other events included visits to Newport News (Va.) Public Schools in April and Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, Ky. this week.

“The site visits have been part of NSBA’s commitment to educational technology since the late 1980s. They provide a great hands-on opportunity to see, hear and talk with educators who are engaged in using technology in transformative ways,” said Ann Flynn, NSBA’s director of education technology.

Flynn said with about one-third of school districts across the country embarking on a 1-to-1 learning initiative, hearing from one of the districts who have launched such an endeavor was a reason Pascack Valley, which began its laptop project more than seven years ago, was selected.

“I remember when you started this [project], the newspapers, everybody thought you were all crazy, nobody could imagine it,” said Erik Endress, NJSBA’s director of association and business development.

For some time Pascack Valley had been interested in integrating technology in more effective ways in classroom, said Erik Gundersen, the district’s director of curriculum, instruction and assessment. And while the demand for more technology was there among teachers and students, the lack of hardware and infrastructure prevented them from moving forward.

So district officials decided to visit Virginia’s Henrico County Public Schools, which in 2001 became the largest school district in the country to implement a 1:1 initiative without a major influx of funds. On the way back, the busload of community members, board members, district staff and parents had a lot of time to talk and eventually come together behind this huge undertaking.

“We had to have district leadership in place and the board played a key role because when you have those questions in the supermarket line you can answer those,” said Erich Tusch, Pascack Valley’s supervisor of technology. “Then there’s technology leadership and of course, financial leadership is critical because that person needs to know what is needed in classroom so they can build a budget based on those needs.”

One of the most important things the district did before unrolling the laptop initiative was move from purchasing the hardware to leasing it.

“That way the inventory remains fresh and it becomes a fixed cost and effective way of managing it,” Tusch said. “The hardware was less important to us than instructional piece.”

That’s really the bottom line, said Gundersen.

“Professional development ended up being a huge cost factor and fortunately leadership understood this,” he said. “And professional development isn’t focused on the laptop but continuous curriculum change and engaging the student on a greater level.”

For instance, Web 2.0 technologies have allowed students taking Italian to converse with students in Italy. Meanwhile peer editing thanks to blogging software is a focal point in all of the district’s English classes, and primary source documents gathered online enrich their social studies courses.

For board members intrigued and enticed by what a 1:1 eLearning initiative can offer, there is a lot of data to draw from to make a compelling pitch to the superintendent, Gundersen said.

“But you can’t go ahead and try to convince people that this will improve test scores, that’s not what this is about,” said Gundersen. “It’s about engaging students and creating authentic experiences for them.”

Naomi Dillon|May 12th, 2011|Categories: Educational Technology, School Board News|

New Tech High leads off TLN site visits

Each year, NSBA conference attendees have the opportunity to attend site visits—schools, businesses, and government entities—to see firsthand innovative ways to use a wide range of technologies to improve student learning, teacher training, district operations, and many other means.

This year, NSBA’s Technology Leadership Network is sponsoring five site visits, including a repeat visit to New Technology High, the U.S. Coast Guard, San Francisco’s Children’s Museum, the Google headquarters and Intel Museum, and the Federal Reserve Bank.

Friday’s visit to New Technology High in Napa, Calif., quickly filled to capacity. This tour showcased the school’s online learning system, Echo, which supports project-based learning, facilitates communication and collaboration, and improves teacher practice.

“The visit to New Technology High, Napa provided an excellent opportunity for school leaders to learn how a comprehensive technology vision can transform education and support learning,” says Ann Flynn, NSBA’s Director of Education Technology. “Through classroom observations and conversations with teachers and students, board members saw how technology supports core subject areas with relevant assignments in an engaging atmosphere.”

New Tech (www.newtechnetwork.org), which runs New Technology High, Napa, supports the start-up and implementation of innovative high schools marked by project-based learning in a technology-rich environment.

“It is inspiring to see the interest in the New Tech Model,” says Lydia Dobyns, president of New Tech Network. “After nearly 10 years of replicating we are gratified to have national demand result in opening 27 schools in 2010 and look forward to another large group of new schools joining the Network in 2011. We have a rich network that includes rural, urban and suburban communities. What started as one school in Napa has become a nation-wide movement.”

It’s the third time NSBA has coordinated a site visit to New Technology High, and with each visit the technology and educational strategies have changed significantly, Flynn says. The school also recently underwent a major green makeover.

“We have helped inspire a national movement in education and now can inspire those schools in sustainable energy,” says Principal Howard Mahoney.

On Saturday, conference attendees can sign up for a tour of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Air Station San Francisco. Many people do not know much about this military branch, Flynn notes, and this site visit is designed to give people an overview of the Coast Guard’s workings. It will include demonstrations of flight gear, interactions with flight crews, and a look at helicopters and other equipment, and experts will also discuss career-ready strategies for students who are looking to enter the military or a similar field. Before the air station tour, participants will have lunch and hear about career readiness from the president of ConnectED, the California Center for College and Career.

On Sunday evening, the TLN will host “Creativity and Technology at the Zeum: Hands-on Animation at San Francisco’s Children’s Museum.” This intimate workshop will allow participants to work on the production of a stop-motion clay animation short film. It will demonstrate the role of arts and technology across a wide range of subjects and also give strategies for engaging at-risk students.

On Monday, attendees can sign up for a tour of the Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco, which will give a behind-the-scenes look of the bank’s operations, including a visit to the cash vault. It will also include an overview of the bank’s financial literacy curriculum for K-12 students.

And “High Tech Trek: Site Visits to Intel Museum and Google” will give participants a chance to see the past and future in Silicon Valley. Guides will show new innovations and give ideas to transform a school district’s work and help students prepare for their 21st century careers.

Joetta Sack-Min|April 8th, 2011|Categories: Educational Technology, NSBA Annual Conference 2011, School Board News, Student Achievement|

Showcasing edtech innovation

NSBA is showcasing the Newport News Public Schools in Virginia as one of our Technology Leadership Network site visits this April. They are truly using technology to transform “business as usual”…take a peek at their video!

To register, visit: www.nsba.org/tlnsitevisits

Alexis Rice|March 21st, 2011|Categories: Educational Technology, Multimedia and Webinars, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Student Achievement, Teachers|

Webinar shows how to use technology to improve reading skills

While it’s widely acknowledged that technology has the power to transform education, some districts wonder: in what ways? A recent webinar sponsored by NSBA’s National Affiliate and Technology Leadership Network offered some specifics and hopefully inspiration to other educators wondering how they can dramatically improve student achievement without dramatic financial investments.

Literacy and reading comprehension continues to be one of the fundamental challenges schools face. Milton Chen, a senior fellow and executive director emeritus of the George Lucas Foundation, said student reading levels have basically remained flat since 1992–and demographic shifts will only exacerbate the problem.

Chen pointed to a January report from the Foundation for Child Development, which called the need to improve English Language Learner instruction critical. Though demographic projections estimate the ELL student population will balloon to 40 percent by 2030, only 6 percent are currently reaching reading proficiency levels by fourth-grade.

In many ways, this was the same scenario California’s Escondido Union School District found itself in. Located in the state’s southern interior valley, the K-8 district serves some 18,000 students–half of whom are second language learners. And that diversity certainly led to huge disparities in reading levels across the district.

“When you look at the challenges our kids face, we have kids from poverty and very limited English spoken at home, we couldn’t keep throwing text-based material at them,” said Kathy Shirley, the district’s technology and media service director. “It’s really important we harness the power of multimedia and these devices do it better than others.”

Those devices happen to be iPods, which Escondido first began experimenting with in 2006-2007, providing a handful of reading specialists with the handheld tool to help students improve their fluency.

“Why did we focus on fluency? Well, we know that is that gateway skill to reading comprehension,” Shirley explained. “If you are using all your working memory to just get through words you will not comprehend what you’re reading.”

Loaded with apps like an interactive dictionary and a dictation program that allows students to practice enunciation, the iPod devices proved so powerful major academic gains were seen in just the first year, prompting district officials to expand the iRead program, as it’s known, each year. Currently, 3,000 iPod devices are spread throughout 160 classrooms, with 70 of them being 1-to-1 iPod classrooms, and six of them operating on 1-to-1 i-Pad initiatives.

“We used to get asked, why do you do this, aren’t these just toys, do kids just play games,” Shirley said.

But as several recent district assessments have shown, these devices are clear game-changers for struggling readers and ELL students.

In one 1-to-1 iPod classroom, the students made almost two years worth of academic gains in reading as compared to the control group of similarly at-risk students. But iPods can also be a benefit to talented and gifted students. Kids in one of the district’s highest performing fifth-grade class still gain about a year’s worth of growth between the fall and spring.

“My message is it’s not the stuff, it’s not the technology, it’s what you do with it,” Shirley said. “[And what you can do is] provide differentiated content, increase engagement, excitement, the projects, all those things … the possibilities are limitless, it seems.”

If you missed the webinar, it is being archived and will available for download at www.nsba.org/webchannelTLN or www.nsba.org/webchannelNA

Naomi Dillon|March 17th, 2011|Categories: Curriculum, Educational Technology, Multimedia and Webinars, School Board News|Tags: |

With school budgets tight, virtual education is on the rise

Stateline.org reported recently on the boom in virtual education and notes:

A combination of higher proficiency standards and tighter budgets are prompting school officials to look more closely than ever at online education. In recent years, several states have put forward plans to expand the reach of virtual schools. Most prominent is Idaho, where state Superintendent Tom Luna wants to require students to take online courses in order to graduate.

“Budgets are being cut,” says Susan Patrick, president of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning. “We can’t do more with less by continuing to do the same thing we’ve always done.”

All but two states now offer online courses to at least some students. In most cases, online courses are blended with in-school courses. But 27 states allow students to attend virtual schools full time. Online courses allow students to work at their own pace, with advanced students moving through the curriculum quickly while others might get more of the attention they need from teachers.

Using the Internet allows poorer or more rural districts to have access to more specialized teachers without having to pay big incentives. And in some cases, it makes it possible for teachers to reach more students either in larger classrooms or at home, minimizing costs to school districts. An audit of Wisconsin’s virtual charter schools last year found the per-pupil costs of some of the schools were lower than those of traditional public schools, although they were higher in others because of high start-up costs.

How has your school district utilized virtual education?

Alexis Rice|March 15th, 2011|Categories: Educational Finance, Educational Technology, NSBA Opinions and Analysis|

Robots as instructors?

TechNewsDaily reports on new research suggesting that robots could someday assist in classroom instruction. The article focusing on toddlers notes:

A robot named RUBI has already shown that it can significantly improve how well infants learn words, and the latest version of the bot under development should also be able to wheel around classrooms, too.

The idea to develop RUBI came to Javier Movellan, director of the Machine Perception Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego, when he was in Japan for research involving robots and his kids were in a child care center.

BoardBuzz finds it interesting that robot instructors in the future may improve the student learning experience.

Alexis Rice|February 23rd, 2011|Categories: Educational Technology, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Student Achievement, Teachers|

Obama’s budget plan focuses on education

This morning, President Barack Obama traveled to Parkville Middle School and Center for Technology in Maryland’s Baltimore County to unveil his budget plan and disscussed the need to invest in education.

See the video from the Associated Press:

 

Alexis Rice|February 14th, 2011|Categories: Educational Finance, Educational Technology, Federal Programs, Middle Schools, Multimedia and Webinars, NSBA Opinions and Analysis, Student Achievement, Teachers, Urban Schools|
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