Technology & Learning - March 2009 - (Page 36) Strategies for K-12 Leaders simultaneous users as a district with 34,000 families. The district had early slowdowns on the system because of the number of simultaneous users but worked with the vendor to create what Hirsch calls a bulletproof solution. “The system has given us the ability to analyze and model in different ways the information we bring into the system,” Hirsch says. “Since fall 2005, we’ve had significant new learning and significant new questions.” “The system has given us the ability to analyze and model in different ways the information we enter. Since fall 2005, we’ve had significant new learning and significant new questions.” District Predicts More Bang for Its Buck with eInstruction Tools In a three-month head-to-head pilot competition between eInstruction and another company, officials at the Enterprise elementary school district chose eInstruction, pointing to ease of use and price as determining factors. Representatives from each company demonstrated products, then left them for the trial period so Assessments Guide teachers could comEfforts at All Levels pare the products side Bringing assessment results as close by side at their own to teachers as possible is the goal of pace, using their own the Evanston/Skokie [Illinois] School material, says J.D. District 65 administration and teachers, Wolfe, IT manager for and this has brought new thinking the eight school, about how assessments are adminis3,500-pupil K-8 dis- tered and reported. J.D. Wolfe trict in Redding, CA. When CIO Paul Brinson arrived at The initial purchase of 24 systems the 17-site, 6,500-pupil K-8 district, will be installed by March and includes assessments were done with pen-andeInstruction’s Classroom Performance pencil tests that were scanned and System and the new Interwrite Mobi compiled, but not in a systematic tablets. The Mobi System supports stu- fashion. Beginning in 2004, District 65 dent-centered, collaborative learning teachers created their own tests, with Strategies for K-12 Leaders where both teacher and students can information services scoring and concurrently interact with and conreporting the results using tribute to the same digital content from Infoline software. team activities to learning simulations Pupils in grades 6 to interactive lessons. through 8 now are using Classrooms where the technology the Measure of Academic initially will be installed were chosen by Progress (MAP) assessment paired teachers with like subjects and from the Northwest Evaluation grades, so teachers could provide peer Association, which is aligned support for the product. Over a three- to Illinois standards. Middle Paul Brinson year period, Wolfe says, the technology will be installed in each of the district’s 250 classrooms, allowing teachers to give quizzes on the whiteboard that can be tallied electronically for instant feedback on whether pupils have mastered the material. Teachers also can post questions on the fly to get feedback during instruction time. “Our decision was based on price, performance, and how well it integrated with our PowerSchool student information system,” Wolfe says. Strategies for K-12 Leaders schools have computer labs where pupils can take these assessments, but elementary schools do not. Plans call for grades 3 through 8 to use the MAP assessment in the 2009–10 school year. Reading is a primary focus in grades K through 2, and teachers use Palm Pilots to administer the Illinois Snapshots of Early Literacy (ISEL) assessments. Data are synched with reporting software for report aggregation. Following the implementation this summer of the School Information Systems’ SIS K-12 student information system from Tyler Technologies, Brinson hopes to create dashboards for teachers that show individual student’s or groups of students’ results. The dashboards will show Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) scores, along with information from MAP and ISEL assessments and other informal sources—such as Promethean Activevote tallies—to create more accurate snapshots of pupil achievement. “This ties directly to our [responseto-intervention] initiative, which uses data for decision making and monitoring and to look at students’ progress over time,” Brinson says. The combination of assessments and reporting not only allows parents to have a more accurate picture of how their children are achieving, it also gives teachers summative information on current and incoming students sooner to customize learning for low and high achievers alike. 36 | School CIO Special Section
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