4 week Technology Camp has a great impact on students who had no previous computer access.

The Challenge
Dallas McPheeters was asked to prepare a Summer Technology camp for 430 students in an elementary school near the US/Mexico border. All the school had to offer to facilitate this was a set of eight year old PCs running Windows 2000. McPheeters applied for Title I funds and ultimately secured a new lab with 13 iMacs.

The Approach
The summer lesson plans were rather demanding, and had students using a variety of web tools from Apple’s iLife product suite. McPheeters put together a web site where all assignments were posted and instructions were provided.

Students created personal web pages using Apple’s iWeb application and used iPhoto to create a visual history project. The next assignment called for using Garageband to create a video blog where they were instructed to “explain your summer school project or what you enjoy best and fear most”. They also had to use iMovie for an assignment, and they wrapped the whole effort up by using iDVD to compile a personal DVD including their projects, as a commemorative take-away. 

Students were clearly engaged and, “rose to the challenge and produced web pages, podcasts, embedded animotos, made and edited movies, and created photo albums with slide shows. Each grade worked according to their themed Unit of Study during their Summer School program.”

The Outcomes
Dallas explained that he has since received reports from participants who went on to Middle School explaining how the tech camp “emboldened them with confidence when facing new technologies, while other students remained apprehensive.”

I thought this quote from a school librarian really helped to illustrate the impact of the Summer Tech camps on the students who participated in it:

“I would definitely suggest that kids who were at tech camp are more tech savvy and are more confident in being “dual platform” users. They can be counted on as leaders to assist other students in using some of the programs. A few have even helped parents navigate during a family program. I’ve witnessed kids’ pride as they show off the iMac lab to visitors and the excited voices they use when describing what they can do. I believe they possess more of an idea of how to create products using technology. They suggest using iMac tools to demonstrate learning.”

Conclusion
This Summer Tech camp clearly benefited these students, who otherwise would not have had access to these types of education technologies. This is a great Ed Tech story, and I’m glad I could share it here.

I recently learned that McPheeters has been the recipient of an Educational Technologist of the Year Award for 2009-2010. Congratulations to Dallas! Hopefully this sort of recognition will help position him (and the school he worked with) to continue their efforts to bring educational technology to the underserved demographic they work with.

To learn more about Dallas and his work, stop by his website.

Related Posts (if the above topic is of interest, you might want to check these out):
Great Education Technology Story: CPS Student Response System helps to improve FCAT scores
And the winners are …

7th Grade Math Teacher shows clear learning outcome improvements while engaging students with this interactive education technology.

As announced last week, one of our two winners in this contest was Juanita Rodriguez, 7th Grade Math Teacher at Don Estridge High Tech Middle School in Florida. Rodriguez employed CPS (Classroom Performance System) response systems from eInstruction in her class for the last six years and has continuously improved learning outcomes and student engagement year over year.

Juanita and I spoke the other day and talked about her wonderful results with this technology. She started using the CPS clickers about 6 years ago, really stepped up their use 4 years ago, and is now using them daily. The clickers allow her to know instantly when a student doesn’t understand a concept she is teaching. The types of math subjects she is covering include geometry, pre-algebra, integers, and statistics.

The benchmark by which success has been defined in this application of education technology has been Florida’s standardized FCAT test. The FCAT is the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which measures student performance on selected benchmarks in Reading, Math, Writing, and Science. Rodriguez has been able to improve the percentage of students with FCAT math scores that indicate learning gains from 80% to 97% with the help of the CPS technology (very impressive!).

Rodriguez recently added the InterWrite Mobi tablet to her classroom technology, which has positioned her to provide even more immediate feedback to her students.

More on eInstruction’s CPS & Interwrite Mobi
The CPS is a type of Student Response System and its an easy to use handheld ‘clicker’ that enables students to respond to questions electronically. Instructors can pose questions manually, or can use pre-existing question templates. Answers can be exported to Excel, Word, a PDF, or a CPS Gradebook. Students have fun with these devices, get to answer questions privately, and generally feel very comfortable with them. Instructors get immediate feedback.

Classroom Performance Systems are recommended as an ideal tool to facilitate benchmark testing and increase scores (and Juanita’s story certainly bears this out). There are also plenty of additional integrated technologies available that can extend the utility of the tool set. The InterWrite Mobi is one such tool. This mobile tablet device allows the teacher to walk around the classroom while working interactively, letting them be even more responsive.

This video shows these (and related) technologies in action:

Conclusion
While SRS tools are not an Internet based technology (which I most often write about here) they are indeed an instructional technology, and they are ‘emerging’ (that is, they are still evolving towards becoming mainstream Ed Tech), so they do fit in well with the types of technologies I like to write about. I’m looking forward to taking a closer look at these types of systems in a future post.

Juanita Rodriguez’s use of these tools in the classroom is the kind of education technology success story that makes blogging about Ed Tech fun and motivating. Thanks Juanita for sharing your story!

Next Week
Please be sure stop back next week to hear more about our other winner, Dallas McPheeters, and the great work he did with a summer Technology Camp for low SES students. 

In the meanwhile, as always, we love to hear feedback and commentary from our readers. Feel free to weigh in with any thoughts, observations or questions about any of what we have discussed here, or anything related. Thanks. 

Related Posts (if the above topic is of interest, you might want to check these out):
And the winners are …
Interactive White Boards

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I’ve put up a new Poll, to help me learn more about the grade levels that my readers are working with. Please give a click if you would (it’s right over there in the side bar, you’ll probably have to scroll up a bit ->). Thanks!

Announcing the winners of the “Great Use of Ed Tech” story contest!

It’s my great pleasure to share some of the wonderful stories that were submitted to the contest I’ve been running for several weeks here, and to announce the winning entries.

With plenty of great stories about engaging, impactful uses of Education Technology in the classroom, it wasn’t easy selecting just one as a winner. As a matter of fact, I decided that two of these stories deserved a little lime light (actually they all do, and I’m sharing a little about some of the other submissions in this post). So, without any further ado, our two winning entries are …

Winning Submission: CPS clickers
7th grade math teacher Juanita Rodriguez wrote and told me about her use of CPS clickers (“Classroom Performance System”, a.k.a. Student Response Systems). “I have loved having this technology and the time it saves me, but when I started using CPS on a daily bases I started seeing FCAT scores increase … This gives me the opportunity to know instantly when my students do not understand the concept.” Students “went from 80% learning gains to over 97% in three years and the scores increased every year with increased use of the technology. I also have a room of students that are engaged and beg me to work problems – they love the technology also.” Rodriquez’s factual evidence of enhance learning outcomes, and clear student engagement earned her story a winning spot!

Winning Submission: Summer Tech Camp for low SES students
Teacher Dallas McPheeters introduced computer technology to K-5 students in a 4 week Summer Technology Camp for low socioeconomic status students living near the US/Mexico border. McPheeters applied for and received Title I funds and secured a brand new computer lab with 13 iMacs. “The students rose to the challenge and produced web pages, podcasts, embedded animotos, made and edited movies, and created photo albums with slide shows. Each grade worked according to their themed Unit of Study during their Summer School program.” Afterwards, McPheeters received reports from those participants who went on to middle school, explaining how “the Tech Camp emboldened them with confidence when facing new technologies, while other students remained apprehensive”. Clearly an impactful use of education technology.

A few other noteworthy submissions

- Teacher Michael Alfred submitted his story about the use of GPS (Global Positioning Systems) with 8th grade students, who used the technology as part of a project to identify and explain at least two reasons why the United States entered into WWI. Students were provided GPS coordinates that took them to locations in and around the school where clues and information were located. They ultimately had to figure out how the clues and info were connected, and then write a memo that would convince the President to enter into WWI. It sounds like this well planned project really engaged the students during the week before Christmas break (no small task!), and they had fun, worked together, and learned a good deal in the process.

- Teacher Thomas Charboneau submitted his story about the use of Google Docs and other tools with the students in his 8th grade Language Arts class. Students wrote a persuasive essay using Google docs, from which he chose 3 to share with the class, to evaluate their effectiveness. Charboneau then created a poll which students filled out, and he compiled and shared the results in a spreadsheet. “Students also shared their essays as view-only with other students so that they could do peer evaluations and self evaluations”. I thought this teacher did a good job of exposing students to multiple technology tools, and encouraging collaboration using these tools.

- Another noteworthy submission came from teacher Michael Stafford, who used a video camera and software to produce a “video yearbook”. Stafford explained that the traditional paper yearbook was beyond the financial reach of the small class he was dealing with. They were able to get access to a good video camera and software for video productions. “For the last 4 years the yearbook was and still is a video production. Students are engaged and learn about technology, quality production and several professions. As a result we have already had several graduates explore video productions as a career.”

Conclusion
I really enjoyed running this contest, and can’t wait to do it again next year. It is inspiring to hear how these educators are using technology in the classroom – providing useful skills to students and engaging them in their own learning journey.

Please be sure to stop back over the next few weeks and read the full length posts featuring our winning submissions!

Share your education technology story (by Monday, March 15) and you may earn a feature post about it here!

Okay readers, it’s almost last call for those great stories about Ed Tech in the classroom. 

Do you have or know of a great example of how Internet or instructional technologies were used in the classroom, or as part of the instructional process outside of the classroom? Did the use of this technology engage students and improve learning outcomes? Please click here to tell me your story and submit it for consideration.

I will review all submissions, with a focus on how effectively students were engaged and learning outcomes were improved, and select one of these stories for a much closer look. I will interview the person who shared that story, and feature their Great Use of Ed Tech! story here on EmergingEdTech.

It doesn’t have to be some fancy, rocket-science application of technology, just some use of a tech app (video, blog, searches, RSS, audio, survey, wiki, twitter, the list goes on and on) that engaged and helped students learn.

I look forward to hearing your story.

Share your education technology story and have it featured here!

This week I am announcing a contest with the goal of soliciting readers’ stories about uses of Internet and instructional technologies in education, to be shared and discussed here, and one of these stories will be selected to be featured in an upcoming full length post.

I will review all submissions, with a focus on how effectively students were engaged and learning outcomes were improved, and select one of these stories for a much closer look. I will interview the person who shared that story, and feature their Great Use of Ed Tech! story here on EmergingEdTech.

Do you have or know of a great example of how Internet or instructional technologies were used in the classroom, or as part of the instructional process outside of the classroom? Did the use of this technology engage students and improve learning outcomes? Please click here to tell me your story and submit it for consideration.

Note that this doesn’t have to be about some fancy, sophisticated Ed Tech application. I’m simply looking for impactful uses of Ed Tech that show how thoughtful instructors can leverage these tools to engage students and faciliate the educational process.  

If you think someone you know may want to share their story, please forward this to them. I will keep the contest open for entries through mid-March.

I really look forward to hearing about readers’ great applications of today’s educational technologies. In addition to the ‘grand prize’ of a feature story here on EmergingEdTech, I will also share elements of some of the other interesting stories that are submitted. Thanks!

Please stop back early next week as we continue our series on “Learning about Lecture Capture“.