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TECHNOLOGY
GRANTS & INITIATIVES
CURRENT
GRANTS
IMPACT
The proposed IMPACT continuation grant would facilitate the expanding of a cross
district professional learning community working collaboratively to improve both
their own productivity and student achievement through integration of technology
into content areas on academic teams in the middle school. Approximately, thirty
middle school teachers (e.g., ELA, mathematics, science, social studies, art) from
both Springfield Public Schools and Ludlow Public Schools will participate in 35
hours of hybrid (face-to-face and on-line) professional development. Forest Park
Middle School and Baird Middle School teachers will participate in technology training
opportunities preparing them for use of one-to-one technology with students (FPMS-
mobile carts, Baird Middle School labs) in their academic areas. Grade level teams
of teachers will create an interdisciplinary, technology enhanced, thematic lesson/unit.
Moving from what can the technology do to help me teach my standards-based curriculum
to how can my team and I still teach the content standards-based curriculum but
make connections across the curriculum and to the world around our students. To
support the creation of these lessons/units the teachers will be trained in the
effective use of interactive white boards, use of Thinkfinity, and use of MassONE
curriculum development tools. Sue Cusack from Lesley University will provide on-line
professional development in the areas of access to print and differentiated instruction.
Support will be provided to the teams of teachers through embedded coaching (FPMS-District
Instructional Technology Specialist, BMS- District Instructional Technology Specialist).
Grade level teams will reflect and share their experiences and resources with one
another through a sharing fair and the posting of best practice to the MADESE website.
MassONE/Moodle will be used to house all professional development agendas, resources,
lesson plans and forums to extend the learning for participating teams.
Teaching
New Things in New Ways
As a result of our “Teaching New Things in New Ways” project, teachers
attained their initial goal: develop skills to develop multi-modal, interactive,
and targeted lesson plans presented to their students on an interactive whiteboard.
As a result, students are engaged by lessons seamlessly presenting activities and
resources – the best that technology can offer. Now that this has occurred,
how do teachers adapt to this change in student behavior? The ultimate goal of achievement
has been touched, but not grasped – that of raising student achievement. The
next stage of this project is to increase teacher understanding of formative assessment,
and make use of the Student Response System integrated into the interactive whiteboard.
Technology
for Data-Driven Decisions (TD3)
In addition to the conditions that the Springfield Public Schools established to
qualify for the TD3 grant in 2007, the district has even more advantageous conditions
in place today. Throughout the course of the TD3 grant SPS installed and configured
a "sister" data warehouse (SPSDW) modeled after the DESE data warehouse.
With a partnership with DESE staff, SPS uses identical data models, reports, security,
and ETL to drive the content of the SPS data warehouse. There are several groups
of District users already trained to utilize the SPSDW, including Principals, Area
Improvement Officers (AIOs), Academic Directors, and Instructional Leadership Specialists.
The Springfield Public Schools was able to incorporate some additional features
into the data warehouse by hosting the installation in-house. The SPSDW is integrated
with Active Directory and the district has implemented a scalable security model
that will allow SPS to identify candidates for data warehouse access and deliver
secure access with customized content. SPS is able to generate data cubes for ad-hoc
data analysis. Currently the District has developed an attendance cube and a discipline
cube for data warehouse consumers. SPS staff has loaded over 10 data points into
the data warehouse including 3 year longitudinal data where available. SPS has also
dedicated significant time to developing in-house resources to deliver content to
district users. SPS has invested over 50 hours of Professional Development to SPS
report authoring staff to develop custom reports. Currently this team has created
over 15 SPS specific reports. The information systems team is also committed to
a strong inventory of our data and has created a data dictionary application to
log all data available in the data warehouse. The district involvement in the TD3
grant was an overwhelming success and has provided a system to drive our data strategy.
By participating in the next round of grants, the district would be able to move
beyond the implementation and into utilization by developing enhanced content for
decision making enabling true Education Intelligence. From the above data it can
be seen that the annual dropout rate is a problem that SPS must address. Through
an already-awarded summer planning grant (State Targeted Assistance: Drop Out Prevention
Work; fund code 221-F), SPS will convene the SPS Dropout Prevention and Recovery
Work Group Leadership Team, along with other leaders, to conduct intensive planning
and development activities to establish a student identification process using at-risk
indicators/predictors (beginning with the MA ESE’s dropout indicator index
from the Accountability section of the ESE Security Portal and adding local data)
to determine the level of research-based interventions/strategies the at-risk student
needs. Through this 164 grant program, SPS proposes to use these enhanced indicators/predictors
to create an Early Warning Indicator data dashboard accessible through the SPS data
warehouse, which will enable high school and middle school principals and guidance
counselors to easily yet securely view the at-risk students, along with student-specific
indicator data, who are in their schools. Additionally, the dashboard will also
display and link research-based interventions/strategies which are appropriate to
meet the student’s needs. Currently, the district must assemble all of this
data manually. The new dashboard will save not only staff time but also time which
is critical to getting the student back on track.
CURRENT
INITIATIVES
Assistive
Technology and Universal Design
Assistive Technology and Universal Design for Teachers and Administrators
The term "assistive technology" refers to any item, piece of equipment,
or product that improves the functional capacity of children identified as having
special needs. This includes a wide range from no tech to high tech, from pencil
grips to computers equipped with highly specialized hardware and software, and is
encompassed in the concept and philosophy of universal design.
Universal Design
refers to a concept/philosophy for designing the delivery of products and services
that are usable by people with the widest possible range of functional capabilities,
which include products and services that are usable with or without assistive technologies.
Principles of Universal Design include, but are not limited to: multiple means of
representation, multiple forms of expression and control and multiple means of engagement
in order to scaffold instruction.
The Springfield
Public School District has embraced the philosophy and principles of Universal Design
and is incorporating them into the instructional process. By providing flexible,
customized curriculum, coupled with teaching strategies that support the strengths
of the user, we accommodate the needs of all students, not just those with physical,
sensory, or learning disabilities. A universally designed classroom creates a learning
environment that maximizes every student's ability to achieve. In support of No
Child Left Behind, it is our goal to ensure that every student has full access to
Springfield's rigorous standards-based curriculum, instruction and assessment.
Springfield has
conducted Universal Design and Assistive Technology training sessions for both teachers
and administrators.
Past Grants & Initiatives
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