How to Support Students and Families through Technology and Innovation
Within Fullerton School District’s
Innovation and Instructional Support department, our focus is to meet
the needs of our staff, students and families by providing the right
mix of technology and support.
As
one of the first districts west of the Rockies to implement a 1:1
laptops program,
we’ve continued to prioritize the intersection of education and
tech–identifying new ways to support our community. This approach
has served us well — and has helped create a culture
of innovation
throughout the district.
Since
most of our amazing educators were already very comfortable using
technology and integrating technology into their daily teaching, we
were able to quickly pivot to remote learning at the beginning of the
pandemic. As our cabinet met daily during the early stages of the
pandemic, we focused on purchasing technology for our teachers that
would not only enhance teaching with masks on, but that would enhance
teaching after the pandemic. Audio amplification of teachers' voices
was an immediate thought, and a very quick purchase for our district.
We
ensured all teachers had laptops and iPads for remote learning;
gooseneck arms to hold the iPads for class demonstrations; classroom
televisions; Apple TVs; and all the audio, video and Internet cables
and adapters needed to ensure they could teach remotely, teach
remotely and in-person at the same time and teach in new ways in a
full in-person class. We needed to ensure everyone was ready to
hard-wire in case wireless had problems. We ordered portable
batteries and chargers for every on-campus student to ensure those in
other areas of campus would always have a charged device and ordered
headphones with mics for all students who would be on campus or in a
home environment with multiple students learning at the same time in
a shared space. Teachers still use audio amplification and other
tools to facilitate both in-person and remote learning — ensuring
every student can hear every word. We also provided long-term
substitutes to combination class teachers and TK and K teachers as we
realized that zooming in those situations would be extremely
difficult without support. Fullerton innovates in HR as well as in
our department.
Through
collaboration, proactive planning and innovation, Fullerton School
District has implemented sustainable changes to best meet the needs
of our students, staff and community.
Proactive
Planning
The
pandemic has provided the opportunity to reflect and plan
proactively, versus reactively. Required changes, like pivoting to
remote learning, helped us identify areas where we could provide
additional support to staff, students and families.
From
March 13th of 2019 to the end of school in May, our department
facilitated over 300 training sessions with teachers to bring them
up-to-speed on various technologies–ensuring they were set up for
success from the start. We also rolled out instructional audio
systems from Lightspeed, which helped us overcome potential barriers
to learning — like muffled
voices — and
keeping students
engaged during
classes taking place over Zoom. The audio solution we chose allowed
teachers to roam the room as the pendant microphone system fed
directly into the zoom through the laptops.
I’m
a huge advocate for instructional audio, because it’s a classroom
solution that’s not just easy to implement — it’s also been
proven
to benefit
students and teachers. Having this type of system in place has been a
tremendous asset during the pandemic, but also one of the best
technologies a district can invest in for any type of teaching.
Collaboration
Throughout
the pandemic, interdepartmental collaboration has helped our district
overcome timely challenges —
like Zoom bombing —
and make the most of new
opportunities — like
pandemic relief funding. Our Educational Services department led the
charge in ensuring newly created online curriculum would be available
that was rigorous, but also in developing a full synchronous and
asynchronous summer school program within an amazingly short time
frame.
Feedback
from staff has helped us determine what strategies are (and aren’t)
working. In turn, we’re investing in solutions that we know our
teachers and students will put to good use.
We
were one of the few districts that I know of who provided five-day
instruction for students who needed a full week of on-campus
experience as a full day. We had at-home distance learning, two to
three days on campus hybrid learning, or five full days on campus
where students on their “off” hybrid days would come to the MPR,
gym, library or outdoor rented tent structures to attend their video
conferences so parents could work. We also worked with local
community groups like the boys and girls club and local churches
where we would provide Internet access and teachers or caring adults
to watch over students in community facilities that could house large
numbers of students while socially distanced. The five-day full-day
learning model was the dream and directive of our incredibly
innovative Superintendent who always has student needs in the
forefront of his decision making.
Innovation
The
pandemic was an opportunity for districts, including ours, to get
creative and try new strategies for engaging students and their
families.
Here
are just a few district-wide innovations that resulted from the
pandemic:
-
Using Zoom to
provide more opportunities for families to connect with students’
teachers, including parent-teacher conferences. Video
conferencing was also used to facilitate board meetings, community
meetings, and a community listening tour surrounding issues of
diversity,
equity
and inclusion.
- Worked with our local
public access television station to broadcast district updates and
educational resources. We contracted with Discovery Education to
post some of their content to local channel
3 for students without home Internet access, and we built a
television studio where our Innovation team worked with district
teachers to produce content for local cable from 8–3
every week day.
- Students were provided with
Internet hotspots to ensure every student in the district could
access the content and the video conferencing lessons with their
teachers.
- The Educational Services department
created an amazing curriculum and summer school program where
students could log in and complete curricular activities as
enhancements to the curriculum and throughout the summer.
- Created videos of “how” we
could do both live and online teaching at the same time to help
teachers feel more comfortable with the new way of teaching.
While
the pandemic has continued to throw some curveballs our way, I’m
proud of the ways Fullerton School District is supporting and meeting
the needs of our community. By prioritizing innovation and continuous
improvement, I’m confident that we’ll continue making sustainable
changes that support our
mission —
working collaboratively to provide an innovative, high-quality
education to every student.