Thoughtful Problem #9 - You are asked to prepare a proposal for a Classrooms for the Future grant to provide laptop computers for each student in every high school Math, Science, Social Studies and English class. Your district administration wants this grant so that it doesn't have to purchase new computers with its own money and so that the district will appear to be progressive and competent. The administration sees this as a technology project rather than an education project. The state grant, however, requires that you develop clear educational goals, a reasonable implementation plan, and an effective evaluation plan for the project. In three-to-five paragraphs describe:
The educational goals of the project, how they were chosen and why they are important.
An implementation plan of how the teachers will be trained and how the laptops will be phased into the classrooms over months or years.
An evaluation plan that includes both formative and summative evaluation of the project to determine how well it has met its educational goals (with an appropriate rubric, if possible).
Response:
The district has decided to apply for the Classrooms for the Future Grant. By doing so, a large burden of the grant process falls on the technology department. This post will outline some of the details of the proposal.
Educational Goals
Students will become familiar with a computer as an educational tool.
Students will utilize the equipment as part of a Learning Management System already in-place.
Students will learn to collaborate through the use of blogs and wikis.
Implementation
The grant process itself does provide some teacher training utilizing the coach position. The coach position is partially funded by the grant and this person is responsible to trainings. The coach will build upon the preset trainings through individual, one-on-one training with each teacher. The trainings will be scheduled prior to the teacher receiving their classroom equipment. They will receive their teacher laptop at the training. The actual equipment will be distributed at the training. Student laptops will be distributed a classroom at a time. The technology department will deploy each cart the day after teacher training has occurred. The overall schedule will span several weeks.
Evaluation
An important part of any technology roll out is an evaluation. For this project, a benchmark assessment should be taken at the beginning of the year. In addition, formative assessments will occur throughout the year as the students are using the technology. Since the idea is that the technology will be used almost daily, teachers will be able to assess students achievements easily. As for a summative assessment, student performance will be measured with the benchmark taken earlier in the year.
2 comments:
I was especially impressed with the goals you chose to use for the implementation of the classroom of the further grant. I think they are acheavable and that a summative evaluation following the use/implementation process can evaluate growth. This will only serve true if proper measurements are used to evaluate the overall program as related to the goals. It seems that a benchmark would be used. Would that be some sort of larger assessment? Even a state test may help you to gather data related to the goals. I also liked the one-one coach to reacher training idea.
Evaluation is important for an educational technology project. The evaluation will help the grant giver to know the technology program is on track or not. I think it seems easier to assess the effective use of computer in classroom because teachers can help to find ways to determine if this investment is paying off in terms of student learning. Then, how to evaluate the effective use of computers in staff rooms? Did the technology director use survey or interviews? The staff rooms’ evaluation data will be helpful to determine the future necessary modifications to the program.
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