August 2005 — Features
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Sparking a Revolution in Teaching and Learning
Teachers can bring the mobile lab into their classroom for an hour a day, a couple of days a week.During lab time, each child individually reviews the lesson and works on practice sessions assigned by the teacher. In a lab setting, the courseware automatically provides an increasing level of explanation and support if a student is struggling to get the right answer; thus, it’s individualizing instruction in real time to the learning needs of each student.Despite the inevitable learning curve,
Fairmount’s reading technology implementation
went amazingly well. Teachers
who had been reluctant to use technology
before were now making it a part of their
daily classroom routine. And the kids were
excited and motivated by the content.
Students were actually asking to stay in
from recess so they could work with the
program. It was a thrill to hear them
humming the songs from the courseware to
themselves as they headed home—talk
about extending the learning day!
The acid test, of course, was the state reading test. We were amazed by the results. The third-graders at Fairmount had gone from a disappointing 37.5 percent passing rate in fall 2003 to an 84 percent passing rate in spring 2004; an astonishing 124 percent increase. In the course of a single year, the lowest-performing school was now giving the most affluent schools in the district a run for their money. With results like this, it was no problem getting additional EETT money to fund the program at Fairmount for another year, and to extend it to seven other elementary schools.
Refining the Model
Interactive whiteboards. We added a number of refinements to our second year implementation. We purchased interactive whiteboards from SMART Technologies (www.smarttech.com) for each school, so students could use virtual manipulatives by just touching the screen. Not only was it great for kinesthetic learners, but it put the student right up in front of the class—not over at the laptop. The SMART Boards allowed for so much more engagement by our students, and they loved it.
Staff development changes. We made a number of important changes in our staff development model. Rather than training every teacher at a school at once, we pulled all the teachers from a single grade together for two days of training. This turned out to be a very powerful technique; it allowed us to focus on the specific content for that grade, and was a rare chance for all teachers of a single grade to talk, share, brainstorm, and come up with wonderful ideas for implementations. In the monthly mentoring sessions that followed, we had the teachers sit down by grade level with the mentor. We also hired a first-year teacher to work with us in the second year of the implementation. She visited a different elementary school every day to work with teachers and students. She taught classes, worked with students in the lab, and helped solve problems that came up. Our traveling “coach” was fabulous; she not only provided enriched instruction for students, she gave just-in-time training to teachers. Her support helped many reluctant teachers overcome their technology fears.
