District Name: Adams Friendship 2010-2011

          Total Number of Teams in project: one 

          Total Number of Classroom Teachers in project:  5

          Total Number of Classroom Teachers in district: 130

          Total Number of Library Media Specialists in project: 0

          Total Number of Library Media Specialists in district: One

          Total Number of Administrators in project: One (gifted and talented director/professional development)

          Total Number of Administrators in district: Seven principals/Associate principals

          Total Number of Students impacted by project: 245

          Total Number of Students in district: 1840   District Goals, Expectations, and  Reflections on this project :

1.     What is the team’s goal and expectations for participating in this EETT Competitive Project? The nine strategies from Classroom Instruction that Works has already has been established within our school district, so it is our team's goal is to infuse technology into the already established lessons so as to not only increase student achievement, but also increase students knowledge and awareness of web 2.0 tools, online resources and other technologies that can benefit the learning process. Our expectations, then, are to increase student academic, information, and technology standards by setting objectives and providing feedback strategies with software applications such as track changes and word and web-based tools such as wordle, edmodo, voicethread, and webspiration. 

2. At the end of the project, explain how this project benefited the team, their students, and the district. (Note unique circumstances, strategies that worked, and lessons learned.)  

Team:  After coaching great teams the past few years learning and incorporating the TWCITW with many of the teachers, I knew what instructional strategy our school needed to improve upon.   Adams-Friendship Middle School needed a little help in providing feedback. Discussing this strategy our team determined ways in which we could provide this feedback faster when using specific tools that were web based such as edmodo, track changes and voicethread. I knew my teammates would embrace the skills needed to accomplish our schools learning goals. All of them incorporate and use these newly learned web 2 tools not only in their personal life, but also in their just professional life . . It is nice to have colleagues who speak the jargon, understand the possibilities and share the passion.        

    Students: Students were excited and extremely engaged when working on projects that included the use of computers. In fact, students would much rather write a science essay in edmodo than on paper. When students complete a science lab, their conclusion need to follow certain criteria. When writing on paper, some of the information and depth of data is lacking. The alternative, edmodo, where students word processed the information, their reports were more in depth, data had been complete and in depth information was relayed. While writing an paper in literature, students were able to copy their note cards to inspiration, organize them and change the organized graphic into an outline! In doing so, they found holes in their information and sought out more information to complete their reports. Wordles were used to determine word frequency. Did they write to many words that were the same? Finally, peer editing was at its best when students received notes, through track changes, on their papers. It was interesting listening to the conversations students were having while reading the editing. It was more intelligent as well as interesting at to what student thought was as important to add or correct. Students liked that they had a choice to choose their peers ideas or not. We ALL felt pleased in the way that these tools helped students reflect upon their original work.  I am deeply impressed with the amount of reflection students have brought to each technology project they have done.  Not only has their work been informative and met the mark in terms of meeting the learning goals, but they have been more thorough. The possibilities are endless.

District: 

As a 5th year tech/TILT team member, and as part of the AF District's Technology Team, I have been able to show my colleagues where we need to be headed as district educators, in terms of 21st century learning goals and using TWCITW.  I have found it highly enriching as well as efficient to use edmodo, Google Docs , forms, igoogle, the whole suite and to create wikis for various purposes throughout the year. As you may be aware, we are an accredited school but lacked in the area of parents and community communication so, The Adams-Friendship Middle School has created a wiki -AF MIDDLE -for parents, students and the community. If is wasn't for the TILT grants, and those who participated in it, we wouldn't have this portal into the middle school. When we launched this site in the Fall of 2010, there were only a few teachers that added their own information and the year progressed, many more were contributing and creating their own page. In January, we sent a mass email to all the 7th and 8th grade parents about this site, the number of viewers in one weeks time went from 3248-3890, currently there are 6949 views.

3. Explain the district’s plans for sustaining the professional skills for effectively integrating educational technology and information inquiry daily teaching and student learning developed during this project and how the district plans to build these skills among the district’s educators and students.

This year the AFAS have had its educators develop a professional development plan regarding technology and the implementation of an instructional tool. This can benefit either the students or themselves. As a resource for many of the teachers, I have discovered we need more practice at the elementary and high school levels. It has been growing, but by small steps.

Also, this summer a few of the elementary teachers are collaborating on unit plans that incorporate educational technology with our current curriullum.