Part 2 of 2

In Part 1, I discussed specific practices that an administrator could use from the beginning of the evaluation process to the end. In Part 2, I will focus on practices to avoid before, during, and after the evaluation process.

Before

Employees should be made aware of the upcoming evaluations at least a week in advance. Administrators should, soon thereafter, provide each employee with the scheduled date and time of their respective evaluation conference. This will provide employees with enough time to consider points of discussion.

In preparation for completing the evaluation instrument, administrators should review email exchanges, memorandums, attendance reports, and other relevant documentation for each employee. Reviewing documentation collected since the previous evaluation allows an opportunity to better recall accomplishments and situations relevant to each employee.

Administrators should review an individual employee’s documentation and complete the evaluation process before proceeding to the next employee. This prevents the possibility of the administrator confusing facts or occurrences between employees.

Administrators also should be very aware of their personal emotional state. Completing an employee evaluation while angry or otherwise distracted could lead to an unfair evaluation that could be challenged and shown to be unsubstantiated.  Retaliation or attacking an employee must never be the purpose of any evaluation.

A final review of the completed evaluation instrument should be carried out in an effort to identify and correct grammatical or typographical errors. Comments should be reviewed for clarity.

During

Administrators should never be distracted during an evaluation conference. Great care should be taken to ensure that each employee receives the respect of being seen and heard throughout the entire discussion.

Body language should always reflect seriousness and engagement on the part of the administrator; otherwise the employee may be led to believe that the evaluation is simply a required exercise.

Interruption of an evaluation conference must be prevented except for the most urgent situations. An interruption, if one occurs, should be explained to the employee so that the employee understands the circumstances and doesn’t feel slighted.

Any comments offered during the evaluation conference should be limited to those documented on the evaluation instrument. Specific incidents or examples can be used to support comments; these should also be documented on the evaluation instrument. Patronizing comments must never be offered. The evaluation in its entirety should be genuine.

Under no circumstances should an administrator lose their composure. Administrators should expect that individual employees may question or disagree with their score. In all cases, the administrator should remain calm, acknowledge the employee’s position and continue the evaluation discussion. Changing a score as a result of an employee’s objections should be considered taboo by all administrators. After all, each evaluation should have been given due diligence as it was being scored.

After

After the evaluation, post-discussion comments should be restricted to thanking the employee for their cooperation in the evaluation process. If any employee refuses to sign their evaluation, administrators should ask another administrator to come in and sign the evaluation instrument as a witness to the employee’s refusal to sign. Details of the evaluation should never be shared with the second administrator.

Throughout this process, administrators should keep in mind that evaluations are to be based on facts and observations that are documented. It would be a disservice to themselves, their employees, and their districts to complete evaluations in any other manner.

• Public school district in Bloomfield, Conn., that is strongly committed to the success of its students. The district embraces the motto, “Every Student, Every Day, Every Classroom.”
• About 2,100 students are enrolled in eight schools, including three primary schools, one middle school, one intermediate school, and three secondary schools. Demographically, the district is 97 percent minority and 48 percent free and reduced lunch.
• Bloomfield High School, the district’s public high school with an enrollment of about 600 students, has been identified as one of the most challenged high schools in the state.

Challenge:

Sustain the gains in student performance made during the 2011-2012 school year that nurtured a vision of higher expectations at Bloomfield High School.

Solution:

Use longitudinal performance data from PerformancePLUS to give students a healthy reality check about their abilities and provide educators with the data they need to support student achievement.

Bloomfield Public School District’s Story of Success

Bloomfield High School

Star athletes and affluent entrepreneurs begin on their road to success with the belief that success is attainable.

Unfortunately, that self-confidence was just out of reach for many incoming students at Bloomfield High School. “Students arrived at the high school thinking, ‘Well if I didn’t get into a magnet school, I mustn’t be a high-flying, high-performing kid,’” says Dr. Bethany Silver, who is director of assessment, evaluation, and research for the Bloomfield Public Schools. “In reality, this is far from true.”

In 2011, Silver was hired to support student achievement in the district. Immediately, she began work on one of the top priorities of Superintendent James Thompson Jr., Ed.D.—setting up a benchmark assessment system through which parallel forms of the Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT), the state’s high-stakes assessments, are administered three times per year to students. The benchmark data is then used to support the development and implementation of student accountability plans and teacher evaluation plans.

An essential component of the benchmark assessment system is PerformancePLUS, SunGard K-12 Education’s software solution that provides a single connection point for anytime, anywhere access to assessment data.

PerformancePLUS helps track longitudinal assessment results through interactive graphs correlated to state standards. With the software, teachers and administrators have the ability to aggregate and disaggregate assessment data and use this information to establish and monitor goals, modify curriculum, and ultimately enhance the teaching and learning environment. In addition, PerformancePLUS offers educators a simple way to create, score, and analyze local assessments, making them a powerful tool for guiding instruction.

Battling Low Expectations with Hard Data

When Silver arrived at the school district, only 9.8 percent of 10th-grade students at Bloomfield High School were at or above goal in reading on the CAPT and 13 percent were at or above goal in mathematics.

A closer look at the longitudinal data from PerformancePLUS, though, revealed that the students’ performance on the tests was not a true indication of their capabilities. “It’s evident when we look at their scores on the high-stakes tests in third through eighth grade that our student population is very, very capable,” explains Silver.

“We were fighting a battle to raise expectations. Not only our students, but some of our teachers believed that most of our capable students left to attend magnet schools or private schools.”

With hard data in hand, the district’s leadership team began a truth campaign. “The message to our teachers was profound—that we had far more students who performed at the highest levels staying in the community, staying in our schools,” she says. “We also gave the data to our parent-teacher organizations, just reinforcing the message that we have high-performing kids who stay in the district and we really have to rise to the opportunity that they are giving us.”

At the direction of the superintendent, the team also confronted the students with the reality of their own abilities. “Our high school leadership met with each and every student and showed them this longitudinal report. Our message: Rise to the occasion. You can’t hide your genius from us anymore,” she recalls.

Beginning with the End in Mind

With the healthy reality check behind them, the district began to put the PerformancePLUS data to work. “Beginning with the end in mind, we built assessments to measure where our students are and then delivered instruction to fill in where, as evidenced by the assessments, the students are not,” she explains.

According to Silver, the connection between performance data and curriculum design is at the very heart of why people become educators.

“This is the rich part. The data tells you that a particular student needs to work on standards 9 and 11 and is a rock star on standard 22. So you get excited about standard 22, and you work on a plan with your student about how you’re going to address standards 9 and 11,” she reflects. “Again, you begin with the end in mind and go backward—go through your curriculum and find exactly what these students are going to need to support them.”

For Silver, the value of PerformancePLUS increases dramatically as it’s used.

“As the director for assessment data, I put in the high-stakes assessment data, which has tremendous value to everyone. Then we add additional assessments—benchmark assessments, classroom assessments,” Silver explains. “As we build that data bank, the information becomes progressively and exponentially more valuable every time we use it, every time we contribute to it.”

Today, the teachers at Bloomfield High School have become greedy for the data. In November 2011, there were 76 active users in the system and 746 logins since installation. By May 2012, just six months later, there were 188 active users and 3,519 logins.

“I think probably the people who are most excited about this are our special education teachers. In the past, they’ve had to go to the student’s cumulative record … to the paper record that’s locked up in the office … in order to get test information about the student’s performance,” Silver explains. “And, to actually log in and see a longitudinal history of performance and challenge areas and strength areas for learners in a color-coded format, they are just blown away!”

The new reporting engine for PerformancePLUS, released in August 2012, was greeted with much enthusiasm by Bloomfield teachers. “When we see data, it should speak for itself. And, I think that the new designs do that in just such an aesthetically appealing way,” says Silver.

On the Road to Success

Today, optimal performance is emerging at Bloomfield High School, thanks to the efforts of the school’s faculty and staff.

“Between the 2011 and 2012 administration of the CAPT, we had an increase of 16.5 percentage points in the students who were at or above goal, which is just amazing,” Silver reports. “It’s a change that you can see from outer space. That growth is just so exciting. It was all because we changed misconceptions. And, we let our kids know that our expectations are extremely high.”

Armed with the data from PerformancePLUS, educators at Bloomfield Public Schools are meeting students where they are academically and helping them develop. By challenging students with high expectations, the faculty members are preparing students to be successful at the most competitive universities and to pursue purposeful careers.

Visit SunGard K-12 Education’s website for more stories celebrating our customers’ success.

• Public school district in Joliet, one of the fastest growing suburbs of Chicago, Illinois
• Two campuses, Central and West, with an innovative academy structure and strong emphasis on technology
• 6,000 students

Challenge:

Reinvent education to prepare 21st-century learners to compete and contribute in our global society.

Solution:

Choose one proven software suite, SunGard’s PLUS 360 products, to manage student information, assessment, curriculum, special education, finance, and human resources. Once implemented, the PLUS 360 suite was leveraged to launch initiatives that extend and enhance student learning opportunities.

Joliet Township’s Story of Success

To meet the challenges of an increasingly diverse, globalized, and complex society, Joliet Township High School District 204 is re-envisioning its educational processes for the 21st century. In recent years, the award-winning district has launched innovative programs—including career academies and a 1:1 technology initiative—which are supporting student achievement.

Bolstering the success of these initiatives are SunGard K-12 Education’s PLUS 360 products, says Karen Harkin, director of the district’s Information Technology Services organization. “I think the systems we have in place with SunGard products are very reliable,” she says. “That’s a huge advantage that we have over some districts that have disparate systems or poor support from their vendors.”

The Transition to PLUS 360

Over the past several years, Joliet Township has been making the transition to SunGard’s PLUS 360 products.

“Because of our satisfaction with the products, we’ve been moving more and more applications to the suite,” she explains. “We believe in the products—that the integration will work and that we’ll be able to get the information we need without duplicating entry.”

Since Harkin’s arrival, the district has implemented eSchoolPLUS, the PLUS 360 student information system; eFinancePLUS, the suite’s human resources and financial management system; and PerformancePLUS, its assessment and curriculum management system. Harkin has led upgrades of these products and transitioned a few other district processes to PLUS 360 solutions to take advantage of unique features and the synergies created by operating from one integrated software suite.

Joliet Central High School

The district installed the PLUS 360 Online Assessment module when the district’s previous vendor went out of business in November 2011. “When our teachers no longer had access to their assessments, they looked to us for help,” she remembers. “The implementation of the
PLUS 360 Online Assessment module only took a couple of months. By the time the teachers came back in January, we had the solution in place. Bringing a new solution online is not an easy undertaking, but we worked together with SunGard and made it happen.”

Thanks to the integration between PerformancePLUS and eSchoolPLUS, Joliet Township now can create targeted education plans. “Our educators can pull information about student performance. And, because they have access to the data, they can customize the learning to meet the student’s needs,” says Harkin.

Joliet Township also transitioned to the eSchoolPLUS gradebook to leverage the features in Home Access Center to better involve parents and guardians in the educational process.

“Our strategic plan calls for engaging parents and the community in the education of our students,” she says. “Prior to the transition to the eSchoolPLUS gradebook, parents had to go to multiple pages. It was disjointed and more difficult to navigate. Now, they get all their information from one place. Home Access Center enables our parents to have access to their student’s attendance, discipline record, grades, and schedule.” This transition not only has improved communications but it also enabled the district to eliminate progress report mailings—saving time and money.

In addition, Joliet Township is now accessing some software from SunGard’s servers, which frees space on district servers and allows its IT staff to support other technological initiatives. Recently, the district also purchased IEPPLUS, the PLUS 360 special education software solution, completing the transition to the suite.

Integrated Data Creates Educational Possibilities

With the strong capabilities and ease-of-use of the full suite of PLUS 360 products, Joliet Township is thinking innovatively about its programs.Six years ago, the district launched a wall-to-wall Career Academy Program. Joliet Township educators are now implementing Individual Career Plans within eSchoolPLUS to ensure that every student is empowered to acquire and apply the attributes necessary to compete and contribute positively to our global society.

Joliet West High School

Educators are also taking an interdisciplinary approach to their work in revising the core curriculum—understanding that the purpose of education in the 21st century has fundamentally changed.

“The focus of education is no longer just the memorization of facts,” says Harkin. “Critical thinking and problem-solving skills have become essential components to the instructional process. Teachers leverage technology to enhance instruction in a manner that allows students to actively engage in their learning.”

To support this new focus, Joliet Township launched a 1:1 technology initiative at the beginning of the 2012-2013 academic year.“The integration of technology is essential in motivating and engaging students in rigorous and relevant lessons,” she says. “1:1 technology provides anytime, anywhere learning and opens the doors to the critical thinking and problem-solving skills that students need.”

Harkin cautions that 1:1 technology is not the complete solution to the challenge of a 21st-century education. “If you just give a device to a student and you’re not really leveraging it for instructional purposes, it will just go by the wayside,”
says Harkin.

So, to support the transition to 1:1 technology, Joliet Township also launched a new learning management system,
JT Learn.“

JT Learn is an online learning environment and student resource portal that provides students with access to their classroom activities, resources, and other information anytime, anywhere. The system provides teachers and students a common learning space to enrich, engage, and extend the teaching and learning that occurs in the physical classroom,” explains Harkin. “With the eSchoolPLUS data, we were able to develop this and really take a huge burden off of our teachers as far as learning how to manage that system.”

With technology in place, Joliet Township is well on its way to fulfilling the promise of a 21st-century education. “It’s all very exciting. I feel really good about where we are and the difference that we’re making for our students,” she says.

Visit SunGard K-12 Education’s website for more stories celebrating our customers’ success.

By Dr. Ramiro Zuniga

Part 1 of 2

The 2012-2013 school year is quickly coming to a close for school districts across the country.  At this time, administrators face a somewhat challenging task—employee evaluations. This is especially true for administrators in their first year.

It is impossible to discuss every type of evaluation within this blog, particularly teacher evaluations. Teacher evaluations are generally arrived at through periodic observations, followed by a summative evaluation at year-end. Furthermore, each state mandates specific factors to be included within the teacher evaluation instrument.

I will focus my discussion on more general practices that can be applied to all evaluations. In Part 1, I will discuss specific practices that will guide an administrator from the beginning of the evaluation process to the end. In Part 2, I will focus on practices to avoid before, during, and after the evaluation process.

These employee evaluation practices, which have served me well over the years, should help any administrator establish and maintain fair and consistent evaluations from year to year.

The easiest and most important thing to remember when going through this process is to be sincere and direct. This is an ideal time for an administrator to communicate how he or she views an employee’s performance. This is also a great time to set the tone and expectations for the upcoming year. I have seen too many colleagues simply “up” the score on a few items from the previous evaluation, without much consideration beyond completing the evaluation and seemingly showing an improvement in performance. Employee evaluations are a great opportunity to build and maintain a high standard of performance within any organization. Administrators should make the most of it.

One of the biggest mistakes administrators make is waiting until the last minute and then not having the time to give each evaluation its due diligence. Rushing to complete multiple evaluations may result in oversights. This, in turn, will lead to missed opportunities to correct a negative behavior or to recognize positive achievements. Allowing enough time for each evaluation will provide time to retrieve emails, memos, and other communications that can shed light on an individual’s performance. In the end, allowing the appropriate amount of time to complete each evaluation will empower an administrator with a higher level of confidence when addressing each employee.

While working through each evaluation, administrators should include clear and informative comments. Care should be taken to ensure that any expectations included in a particular employee’s evaluation are also expected of other employees in the same situation.

Once evaluations have been completed, they should be set aside for a short period to allow time for reflection. After a day or two, each evaluation should be read and corrected of typographical and grammatical errors. This review also allows an opportunity to reword comments for maximum impact.

Administrators should make an attempt to anticipate employee questions and reactions and give thought to an appropriate response. Often, employees will question how a specific item was scored or why a comment was necessary. They are more likely to accept a score or comment after hearing a concise explanation.

The evaluation discussion should begin with the employee being asked to read through the evaluation. Upon completion, the employee should be prompted for questions and comments. Responses to all comments or questions should be brief and to the point. Responses should be worded so that employees feel encouraged and inspired. Wording that alienates the employee should be avoided.

Regardless of how the discussion goes, administrators should always conclude the discussion by asking the employee to sign the evaluation. The administrator should then sign the evaluation, provide a copy of the signed evaluation to the employee, and thank the employee for coming in.

(Part 2 of 2)

In Part 1, I discussed variations in design and uses of online courses by school districts across the country. In Part 2, I will share my thoughts on best practices and the appropriateness of specific types of online courses.

Online courses are intended to ultimately serve one purpose: convenience. Online courses allow students to conveniently access courses that are not available to them. Online courses also allow students the convenience of learning at home or other location.

In designing the first online graduate courses I taught, I chose the asynchronous format. At the time, I felt that requiring students to log in at a specific time was not substantially different than asking them to come to class on campus.

Over time, I found that my students and I preferred the hybrid format. Hybrid courses combine the best aspects of traditional and online courses. With this format, students can break away from the monotony of a fixed class schedule, yet they have opportunities to meet and interact with others taking the same course. In my opinion, there is no substitute for this type of exchange. The hybrid format lends itself collaborative learning and expands the students’ social and professional networks. As a result, the hybrid format allows for optimal learning.

Courses that are completely online have several potential pitfalls caused by the course design itself. First, with online communication, there is rarely direct communication. In many cases, instant communication between student and educator is more a myth and less a reality. Often the response to emails and texts is delayed, even between students. And, as discussions are kept brief and often communicate incomplete thoughts, online communication can result in misunderstanding.

Keep in mind that students have individual learning styles. Some students need the constant verbal exchange with fellow students and educators in order to fully understand concepts. Although possible, online learning is more difficult for these students. Closely associated with the individual learning style is individual self-discipline. Completing an online course, especially a hybrid course, requires students to work independently.

Designers of online courses need to consider many factors when developing their courses. Information overload, resulting from the endless sources of online information, is a possibility. Thought needs to be given to the amount of supplemental material that will be emailed or posted for students to read. The frequency of communication and feedback between educator and student also must be considered in the design of the course.

I do believe that online courses will continue to evolve and be better suited for more and more individuals. I also believe that online learning will remain an enhancement to our curriculums. I don’t believe that online curriculums will be the future of K-12 education. I have spoken to many educators about this possibility. These educators have told me that schools and the social development that occurs in them as a result of direct interaction are essential to the education of our children and to the well-being of our communities. These same educators have also told me that online courses do not allow for this. Perhaps more importantly, these educators strongly believe that our students develop the sense of responsibility and direction in our schools.

I believe them.

(Part 1 of 2)

For many years, I’ve been keeping an eye on the evolution of online courses in education.

During this time, my vantage point has shifted from student to technology professional and professor. My thoughts, which have not changed very much, have primarily centered on design of online courses as it relates to rigor, convenience, application, and appropriateness. In Part 1, I discuss the variations in design and uses of online courses. In Part 2, I share my thoughts on best practices and the appropriateness of specific types of online courses.

Looking back, I can truthfully say rigor was lacking in the courses I took as a student. At the time, online courses were relatively new, so this was to be expected. As with any innovation, the initial steps are generally a far cry from future strides.

Since then, more educators have become better acclimated to this new method for delivering instruction. Additionally, robust course management software solutions have emerged in recent years that provide educators more flexibility with course design. It is this combination of the increased comfort level and better course design solutions that have resulted in an increase in course rigor.

Today, online courses come in a variety of formats with differing characteristics—completely online versus hybrid and synchronous versus asynchronous.

The typical online course can be carried out completely online without ever physically meeting in a classroom. Hybrid online courses, on the other hand, split traditional class time with online time. As an example, students can meet every other week in class and complete the remainder of the course online.

Synchronous online courses require that students and educators meet online on specific dates and times in order to carry out activities such as group discussion, lectures, and presentations.  Asynchronous online courses allow for students to complete activities and assignments at their own pace.

One of the more controversial uses of online courses is for K-12 education. Proponents of these programs generally assure proper accreditation and claim that students will excel through their programs. Controversial or not, these programs are gaining acceptance by many. Although the majority of online courses for K-12 are utilized for credit recovery or for delivering courses that are unavailable at students’ home district, other programs offer a complete curriculum to students. Some programs offer courses starting at the middle school level, while others offer courses solely for high school students.

It goes without saying that there are definite advantages to online courses. Many school districts have limited resources and course offerings for their students. Online courses give these school districts the opportunity to overcome those limitations by partnering with universities and other entities to offer what is missing. These opportunities also apply to school districts that are geographically isolated.

To be continued…

In January 2012, North Canton City School District rolled out a BYOD program at Hoover High School. At eTech Ohio, Eric Curts, technology director for the district, presented highlights of the program, shared a wealth of resources, and offered wisdom gained during the past year. John Fano, network manager from the district, assisted in the presentation.

The session—which was both insightful and informative—offered a roadmap for BYOD implementation. Curts’ PowerPoint slides are posted on the technology team’s BYOD website, which also includes a timeline, frequently asked questions, school policies, helpful resources, and links for further learning. You’ll find the slides on the “Information” tab on a page titled “Timeline.” For those of you who hate to search, just click on this link.

While we love to think we could report it as well as Curts said it, we know better. So instead, we’ll share some quotes from the presentation. Caution: In order to appreciate the full meaning of Curts’ advice, please read the following with a touch of irony and an enthusiastic passion for the opportunities that technology brings to education.

Words of Wisdom:

Google Apps. “Google Apps is a big part of our BYOD because it opens the doors for a lot of things when you move into the cloud … when you no longer have to have certain software installed on a certain computer running a certain operating system. When it’s all web-based, it opens up a lot of possibilities.” Curts leads a Google Apps user group, the website for which can be found at http://www.appsusergroup.org/.

Defining BYOD. “What is BYOD? In our district, we did not put any limitations on it. Our definition is that it’s any personal device that the students would bring to school to be used hopefully for educational purposes—including laptops, netbooks, tablets, e-readers, cell phones, MP3 players, and more. What do I mean by more? It’s not safe to define this list because it’s always going to change.”

Reasons to Choose BYOD. “Why on earth would you want to consider BYOD?” Curts followed this rhetorical question by offering the following list of reasons for implementing a BYOD program.

• Access to more devices than the school can provide. “They’ve got stuff at home better than we can provide them.”
• Student comfort level with their own devices. ”It’s their device. They don’t have to figure out how to take a picture with it or how it turns on.”
• Student care for their own devices. “We all know how much they care for our school-provided devices. Ahhh, the things I have found inside of CD drives.”
• Modern personal devices have powerful applications in school. “My phone is more powerful than some of the computers in my school.”
• Opportunity to teach proper use of personal technology. “Eventually, the students have to learn how to properly use their personal devices in their life. I would rather them learn it now, when we can help them. BYOD is hard. And, this is the problem—kids don’t get this. They really don’t.”
• Potential cost savings for schools. “There are costs. You just can’t do BYOD and think it’s going to be free. We had to upgrade our wireless quite a lot to be able to have the access throughout our building.” The school worked with Meraki Wireless on this project.
• Student and parent interest. “This is not something you have to bend people’s arms and say, ‘Hey, c’mon. We want you to do this.’ Students have been asking for years to be able to bring in their devices. And, we’ve had parents wanting [this too].”
• You already have an unofficial BYOD program. “You already are doing BYOD, whether you realize it or not. They have the devices. They are already in your school now. They are running a covert BYOD program, whether you like it or not. You might as well just admit it and make the best of it.”

Student Survey. In advance of implementing the program, the district’s technology team surveyed students about their technology—72 percent said they owned a laptop, 28 percent owned a tablet, 18 percent owned an e-reader, 50 percent owned a smartphone, and 71 percent owned a media device. “When they said they owned it, I don’t know if they really owned it or if their parents owned it and [the students] just thought they owned it. Only 9 percent of the kids said, ‘no,’ to all those devices. So about 90 percent had at least one of them. Some of the kids had all five. About 90 percent said they would bring them to school.”

Parent Survey. The technology team also surveyed parents. “Their number [for whether they’d allow their students to bring in the devices] was lower. It was about 70 percent.”

BYOD Pilot Results. “The pilot was very successful. And, I guess what I mean by that is: Nothing bad happened. There was fear if we opened this up, it would be pandemonium. It wasn’t. The kids did a good job.”

Wireless Network. The school wireless network is throttled for video, gaming sites, streaming music, etc. “Throttling means that we put a limit to the amount of bandwidth that can be used for streaming video. We don’t block them, but we throttle them. There are a lot of good reasons for [watching] YouTube [in the classroom]. There are also a lot of cat videos on YouTube. We don’t want [students] just watching cat videos.”

“We actually have three WIFI networks. The one for the student is [throttled]. For the teachers, there is no throttling whatsoever. And, we have a guest/visitor network for people who come into the building—coaches or people who come in to do presentations—which is actually more restricted than the student [network].”

Professional Development. Professional development for teachers is key to the success of a BYOD effort. “We really need them to start thinking differently. If we roll out BYOD and a couple years from now, every student has a device … and the teacher is up front teaching and [students are using them to take] notes … so what. They’ve taken 25-cent pencils and replaced them with $200 phones and tablets, and they’re doing the same thing. This needs to be transformative. We need to ask, ‘What can we do differently with the technology that we couldn’t do otherwise?’ We need to think of other ways that we can teach instead of doing the same things with the devices.” The “Uses” section of the BYOD website features some creative ideas.

Student Success. “Students are finding ways to use technology that works for them—things that make it easier for them to learn. And, we’re no longer stopping them.”

Equity. Equity is always an issue with BYOD. Curts offered a few suggestions for addressing this issue, such as sharing the devices and doing group activities that don’t require everyone to have a device. The school district also launched the program, Smartphones for Smarter Kids, through which the district accepts donations of old smartphones. Curts will wipe the content from the donated devices and connect them to the school wireless. He hopes eventually to be able to provide them in packs of 10 to teachers.

During her eTech Ohio presentation, Maryann Wolowiec, president of IEL Educational Consulting, made the case that STEM is by its very nature aligned with Common Core principles. As evidence to support her premise, Wolowiec shared her experiences as project manager for the creation of the National Inventors Hall of Fame® … Center for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Learning.

The National Inventors Hall of Fame® is a public middle school in Akron, Ohio. Its vision is to “provide the highest quality education experience for students, which ensures creativity and inventive thinking through a focus on science, mathematics, and technology.” The school, which is housed in the former home of the National Inventors Hall of Fame, is not just for students who are gifted in the STEM disciplines. “The school is for all students of all abilities and really represents the demographics of Akron,” said Wolowiec.

At the school, learning begins with a real-world problem.

In problem-based learning, the curriculum is organized around a holistic problem, enabling student learning in relevant and connected ways. According to the Illinois Math and Science Academy Problem-Based Learning Network, problem-based learning “creates a learning environment in which teachers coach student thinking and guide student inquiry, facilitating learning toward deeper levels of understanding while entering the inquiry as a co-investigator.”

Along the path to a solution, students gather more than just knowledge and skills associated with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines. They also gain the ability to problem solve, to engage in interdisciplinary thinking, to collaborate locally and globally, and to be creative and inventive thinkers with an entrepreneurial mindset.

This is consistent with the goals of Common Core standards, which according to the Common Core website, “are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers.”

Although problem-solving is a key component, Wolowiec cautions that STEM is more than PBL. “STEM is a system change,” she said. “It’s really about the whole child.”

In designing the curriculum, Wolowiec says that National Inventors Hall of Fame® educators start with the standards. “The first step is you have the team of teachers curriculum-map the whole year,” she said. Although the PBL units are usually developed around social studies issues or around science issues, the other disciplines leverage the problem to teach essential skills. “Language Arts loves the units, because they can build in so much reading,” emphasizes Wolowiec.

Educators at the school didn’t “force” everything to fit the same mold. “Instead of going out and picking a problem and trying to stuff all the standards into a problem, we work the other way,” she explains. “We [ask], ‘What is it that we need to the kids to be able to do? Who are our learners? What are their interests? Who are our community members, our partners?’”

The educators also supplement their problem-based unit with instructional materials that aligned with this philosophy and vision. “So when the students are not in a problem-based learning unit, they may be in a math unit that supports that kind of thinking using connected math,” explains Wolowiec. “We tried to find curricular development material that supports that kind of learning so that everything that is being done is reinforcing each other.”

Students who learn through this process are curious about the world and are not afraid to take on the problems they see using the knowledge they have. “We want students who are informed risk-takers,” she said. “We want students who are not afraid of failure, but who will fail and will try again.”

Medina City Schools panelists included (shown left to right) Stephani Itibrout, Stacy Hawthorne, Shannon Conley, and Christina Hamman.

Medina City School District began its blended learning journey thanks to a $130,000 grant from eTech Ohio. The grant funded the creation of rotational-style blended classes. Three classes were launched in fall 2012, and six more are in development for the 2013-2014 academic year.

For the first year of this project, Stephani Itibrout, Christina Hamman, and Shannon Conley developed their own content and all the resources for three new classes—respectively Rhetoric and Composition, Honors Advanced Quantitative Analysis and Mathematical Modeling, and Local and American History.

A lot of kids struggled with the blending-learning model during the first year of the project. “Next year, we are going to hold a required one-day boot camp and have two weeks to finish the online portion,” said Stacy Hawthorne, technology integration coordinator. The team has blogged about their experiences at http://medinablended.edublogs.org/.

The following are highlights of panelists’ reflections on their journey:

Stacy Hawthorne
Technology Integration Coordinator

Medina City School District, located in the suburban Cleveland/Akron area, has 2,310 students in its high school alone. The high school has dense wireless—there is enough bandwidth for every student to connect. They are primarily BYOD, although it’s at the teacher’s discretion. The district has six computer labs, each with approximately 30 computers.

Blended classes are three days a week in class, two days a week out of class. The sessions are held in the morning, and the students attend their regular classes in the afternoon.

The school district spent almost half of the grant money on professional development. [eTech Ohio required that at least 25 percent of the grant funding be spent on training for teachers.]

In addition, the grant funding was used to purchase software and hardware, including laptop computers for the teachers in the blended program, laptop computers for the mathematics class, and iPad minis for the history class.

The district also purchased digital content though the Learn 21 Consortium, including 12 fully online courses from K¹² and blendedschools.net.  The district plans to adapt some of these courses to blended classes, which will be rolled out for the 2013-2014 academic year.

Stephani Itibrout
Language Arts Teacher
Rhetoric and Composition

For Stephani Itibrout, this blended-learning project gave her an opportunity to think creatively about the subject she has taught for 16 years.  “I wanted to see what English looks like outside of a traditional brick-and-mortar classroom,” she said.

Instead of using more commonly studied texts, she employed today’s reading material—online content from Time magazine, The Onion, and various newspapers. She also tapped into satirical shows, like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and contrasted their content with more traditional news offerings.

“This is what people read and watch outside the classroom. Maybe we should learn to process this information in a more learned way,” she said. “And, with the new common core standards, informative text is becoming much more important.”

In addition to allowing the students to develop a context through which to critically consider the information they read, Stephani hoped to prepare them to be more responsible when they learn.

During the course, she has used VoiceThread. “It was a way to help my students reflect and to [move to] that higher level of thinking,” she said.

For her first exercise, she shared her own children’s VoiceThreads and required her students to create a reflective response. In subsequent exercises, the students posted their own pictures, explaining why they were important to them, and responded to the other students’ posts.

Through the process, students learned how to critique writing and workshop a paper. “This accomplished several things. It got the students writing. It got the students to know each other and to know me and to [become] familiar with the vocabulary of writing and workshopping. And, it got them familiar with using technology to present.”

Like her students, Stephani also learned from her experience. “One of the exciting things about teaching Rhetoric and Composition as a blended course is that I’m learning to apply some things that I do for this course to my other two courses,” she said.

Christina Hamman
Mathematics Teacher
Honors Advanced Quantitative Analysis and Mathematical Modeling

Through the grant, Christina Hamman was able to offer an advanced course not previously offered at Medina High School. “I wanted this to be a special topics course, with a heavy emphasis on stats,” she said. During the course, she exposed her students to real-world data and tools, like Excel and Minitab.

The course content is delivered online. “They’ll have some readings. They’ll have some videos. I have online activities that they can go through,” she said. With so many sources, Christina said that things got “messy” quickly. She employed the online tool SoftChalk to build her lessons. “The students like it because it’s a one-stop shop.”

“When students come to class, it’s more of a workshop-type model,” she said. “Basically, we’re there to solve problems.” For projects, the students must put together a project proposal that maps out the purpose of the project, the process and timeline for completion, and responsibilities for team members. There is always a paper and a presentation at the conclusion of the project. Most projects take two to three weeks.

For team projects, the class collaborates on Google Apps. And, the main form of assessment is through problem-solving or projects.

Christina said the course has evolved as her own experience with the blended-learning model has increased. “If you look at the course from week one to now, it’s changed because I’ve had to adapt things to suit everyone’s needs,” she said. She hopes to eventually get the course to the point that it is self-paced.

Shannon Conley
History Teacher
Local and American History

Shannon Conley’s students are documenting the history Medina through short stories that connect to national history. The content is housed on an app that was developed in conjunction Cleveland State and the Chillicothe Educational Learning Center.

Shannon wanted her blended-learning course to have an impact beyond the classroom. “I want students to be engaged and to find the value in not just learning history, but in using history to make personal connections,” she said. “My students don’t do projects that are just turned into me. My requirement is that it’s published. They create content that is accessible and presented all over our town.”

The students direct their research. “My students individually select the story they want to tell,” she explained.

In her classroom, Shannon serves as a facilitator. “I’m giving them online content to move through, but I’m also meeting them as their support person.”

As she teaches collaboration skills, Shannon says that she is benefiting from the opportunity to collaborate with her colleagues on the panel. “I think I speak for the group when I say that I think we are standing on the edge of a huge cliff,” she said. “It’s good to have support. It wouldn’t have happened without that support.”

Online learning has found a productive foothold in this nation’s K-12 classrooms. During Tuesday’s keynote address at eTech Ohio, Heather Clayton Staker—senior research fellow at the Innosight Institute—discussed the implications of online learning and offered her predictions for a future that blends traditional bricks-and-mortar education with this recent educational innovation.

Heather Clayton Staker

During her address, Staker paralleled the ongoing evolution in education with similar paradigm shifts in industry, noting that disruptive innovations have historically had a hand in creating new markets and displacing earlier technologies.

Online learning can be considered a disruptive innovation. Already, traditional higher education models are evolving because of its influence. Now, we are seeing a similar effect on this nation’s K-12 classrooms.

According to Staker, online learning offers the following benefits for education:

• Allows for Individualization. Online learning is inherently modular, which allows for customization. Student can create their own experience and learn at their own pace.
• Provides Access and Equity. Online learning can provide access to courses previously unavailable in districts and can extend the reach of great teachers.
• Increases Productivity. In a time that education spending is not growing, technology can be part of the solution in that it provides an affordable option.

Today, more and more schools are implementing a blended learning model—one which combines face-to-face classroom methods with online learning to form an integrated instructional approach. As this evolution of education has occurred in our classroom, Staker noted that four models of blended learning have materialized:

• Rotation Model. Students rotate between online learning and other stations on a fixed schedule or at the teacher’s discretion.
• Flex Model. Students rotate between online and face-to-face learning on a fluid schedule.
• Self-Blend Model. Students take an online course to supplement learning that they are doing in a brick-and-mortar setting.
• Enriched-Virtual Model. Full-time virtual schools with face-to-face scaffolding.

Looking into the near future, Staker predicts the continued rise of blended learning in K-12 districts. She believes we will see growth in the number of elementary schools employing the rotation model and the number of high schools using the self-blend model. At the district level, she expects to see more flex model prototypes and pilots. She also believes that more full-time virtual schools will integrate brick-and-mortar experiences.