1998-1999 Technology Literacy Challenge Fund

1998-1999 Technology Literacy Challenge Fund Proposal was fully funded! Use of Requested Funds Goal of effort Federal Technology Goals Objectives Target Population Main Activities Extent of Need Management & Responsibility Professional Development Accomplishment of Objectives (Evaluation) Using Requested Funds Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) proposes using funds in the amount of $325,000.00 to provide opportunities for reading and Title I specialists, first grade, special education resource and ESOL teachers, as well as Title I instructional assistants to work cooperatively to develop, plan and deliver instruction using the resources of the Research and Learning Hub residing in each elementary school's media center and classroom computers so that every student will read independently by the end of second grade. This year's monies will also make it possible to continue to support media specialists, kindergarten and second grade classroom teachers. The instructional focus of this project is to increase students' reading and writing skills as a result of using technology effectively. Students kindergarten through second grade at 22 Title I schools will demonstrate a positive attitude toward reading and writing and increase their skills in understanding, interpreting information, responding critically and personally to a variety of reading materials. A team of trainers consisting of 2 early childhood technology trainers with input from 2 early literacy teacher trainers will provide a series of workshops and site based support to enable teachers, specialists and Title I instructional assistants to develop and implement lessons collaboratively. Developmentally appropriate reading and writing activities will be created to support the MCPS Early Literacy Initiative. Funds will be used to provide substitute release time and stipend training for participating teachers and specialists. In addition, forty four multimedia computers and selected software that supports reading and writing will be purchased for the 22 participating schools. Each computer will reside on a cart with wheels making it easy to move from one location to another. A digital camera will also be purchased for each school, to take stills and QuickTime movies. Funds will also be used to provide transportation for families to participate in Computer Family Night. Finally, funds will be used for part time staff including part time clerical and MCPS Department of Educational Accountability (DEA) support, user support and private contractors to help set up and maintain the computers . Top of Page  Addressing Federal Technology Goals The funds of $325,000.00 will be used to advance all four goals proposed by the federal government: • All teachers will have the training and support they need to help support all students learning to read and write using computers as a tool and through the information superhighway. All early childhood teams, kindergarten -grade 2, ESOL, and special education resource teachers, reading, media, and Title I teacher specialists and Title I instructional assistants in the Title I schools will participate in staff development activities. •All teachers and students will have modern computers in their classrooms as a result of purchasing 2 additional computers for each participating school.(Each grade level, K-2, will have access to at least 1 multimedia computer.) • Every classroom and library media center will be connected to the information superhighway as a result of wiring activities and the purchasing of appropriate hardware and software for 66 early childhood classrooms. • Effective and engaging software and on-line resources will be an integral part of every school curriculum as a result of identifying, purchasing, training, planning, and implementing appropriate reading and writing software applications and electronic resources in the reading/ language arts programs of the 22 schools. Top of Page Defining Target Population The targeted population for this project is students in kindergarten through 2nd grade in the 22 Title I schools and their classroom, special education resource and ESOL teachers and reading, media and Title I specialists, as well as 65 Title I instructional assistants. In the 22 schools, there are 2065 K-2 students identified as needing Title I reading support. There are a total of 6311 students who receive free/reduced meals in the 22 Title I schools. Third grade students in MCPS Title I schools score 21.8 points lower on the MCPS administered Criterion Reference Tests (CRTs). In addition, none of our Title I schools have met grade 3 MSPAP standards in reading and writing. Young children are eager to learn, willing to take risks, and highly capable of using computers to research, explore, create, and learn. Studies show that economically disadvantaged students retain less and therefore need experiences that meet all learning styles, are hands-on and repetitive. If early childhood students are given opportunities to use technology as a tool for reading, writing, and research, they will have a foundation for life long learning using technology appropriately which will result in more effective and efficient learning as they progress in school years. Students and teachers to be impacted by this effort This effort would improve the reading and writing skills of 5,645 early childhood students, 1,787 kindergarten students, 1,929 first grade students and 1,929 second grade students, in 22 Title I schools. This effort would improve 304 teachers' ability to help students use technology as a tool for reading and writing; 42 kindergarten teachers 44 first grade teachers, 44 second grade teachers, 22 special education resource teachers, 22 ESOL teachers, 22 reading specialists, 22 media specialists, 21 Title I teacher specialists and 65 Title I instructional assistants. Top of Page Extent of Need The majority of economically disadvantaged students in MCPS score lower on the MSPAP and MCPS CRTs, partly due to the fact that they have less text-rich environments and less computer access at home. Reading and writing are foundation skills upon which other academic skills are built and need to be improved to promote success for every student. There is a strong and growing body of evidence that successful programs during the early school years lead to higher levels of success in school in later years. Therefore, the focus of this project will be to use technology to promote growth in reading and writing skills with students in grades kindergarten through second grade. Stage One of Global Access created the Research and Learning Hubs for each school. This proposal will provide support for the increased use of the Research and Learning Hub to support improved reading and writing skills and the increased use of technology within the classroom through a multi-pronged approach including hardware and software, wiring early childhood classrooms, making networked computers available, staff training, parent involvement and community partnerships. The impact of this project will be to increase student performance in reading and writing. Top of Page Addressing professional development A major emphasis of this project is professional development which will increase teachers use of technology as a tool to support improvement in students' performance in reading and writing. See Plan of Operation, Management, and Evaluation for detailed descriptions. This proposal would also make continued professional development possible for teachers supported during the 97-98 grant, which has been extremely successful. Top of Page Goal of effort As a result of using technology effectively students will (1) demonstrate positive attitudes toward reading and writing, and (2) demonstrate ability to vary their orientation to text by interacting with a variety of texts for different purposes. Students will also read for literary experience, to be informed, and to perform a task. The goal of this effort is directly connected to the MCPS goal to have each student read independently by the end of second grade. Top of Page Measurable Objectives Objective 1: Infrastructure will be in place in the 22 schools by September 1998 to ensure access to electronic resources, CD ROMS and Internet from 100% of participating classrooms and media centers. Objective 2: Following professional development, by June 1999, at least 90% of targeted teachers will develop the skills needed to internalize a structured process to develop, plan, and deliver instruction using technology effectively to help students demonstrate positive attitudes toward reading and writing and increase skills in global understanding, interpreting information, and responding critically and personally to a variety of reading materials. Objective 3: By June 1999, 90% of the students, grades kindergarten through second, will demonstrate positive attitudes toward reading and increase their skills in understanding, interpreting information, responding critically and personally to a variety of reading materials. Students will maintain portfolios including at least three products that reflect student attitudes and growth in skill development. Objective 4: By June 1999, 90% of the students, grades kindergarten through second, will demonstrate positive attitudes toward writing and increase their skills in writing for a variety of audiences and purposes. Students will maintain portfolios including at least three products that reflect student attitudes and growth in skill development. Top of Page Main Activities The activities proposed for this project fit into five categories; training, on-site support, assessment, community involvement, and maintenance of the Early Childhood Technology Resource Center are detailed in the chart below. Participating students, teachers, specialists, instructional assistants, and volunteers will have training opportunities on the use of the Internet, World Wide Web, e-mail, software applications and a variety of CD-ROMs. Additionally, teaching strategies and lesson planning using the Project Approach, MSPAP prompts and strategies will be taught, modeled, developed and disseminated. On-site support will be given to teachers, specialists, and instructional assistants for planning and developing lessons matching student reading/writing behaviors and the appropriate use of electronic resources to be implemented in participating classrooms and media centers. Collaboration will be facilitated by periodic after school meetings and the use of MCPS' conferencing and e-mail system. To promote community involvement each participating school will host at least one Computer Family Night. Computer Family Nights are arranged to give students and their parents the opportunity to work together in a computer friendly environment. They also allow the students to show their parents just what "experts" they have become at using the computer for reading and writing. For students who do not have access to a computer in their homes, Computer Family Nights give those students and their parents hands on experience. After attending a Computer Family Night, parents will see the value of using computers as a tool to enhance learning how to read and write. A second activity to promote community involvement is the maintenance of the Early Childhood Technology Resource Center which was established as a result of the 1997 TCLF. This special resource provides additional appropriate software, lesson plans, Internet access and URLs for use with young children, their families and their teachers which support reading and writing. Appropriate print resources such as periodicals and books on early literacy and technology with young children will be included. As part of the MCPS Professional Library, this resource would also be open to the public. Top of Page Management and Responsibility The key personnel for this project will include 2 early childhood technology instructional specialists, Bonny Chambers and Dara McCormick and 2 Early Literacy Teacher Trainer Specialists, Dr. Marci Fineman and Marsha Eiben . The two technology trainers will work under the direction of Dr. Elizabeth Glowa, Director, Instructional Technology Support Team in conjunction with the 2 early literacy teacher trainer specialists under the direction of Dr. Suzanne Clewell, Coordinator, Reading/Language Arts. See chart for detailed description of personnel responsible for specific activities. Top of Page Accomplishment of Objectives (Evaluation) Project coordinator will check computer set up before and after machines are cloned. User support personnel assigned to each school will test and verify that 100% of participating classrooms and media centers are able to access software, the Internet, and peripheral items successfully. Teachers will demonstrate that they have developed the skills needed by creating and implementing a lesson that incorporates the strategies and materials used in the training activities. These lesson plans will be shared and reviewed in their community of learner groups. In addition, each teacher will be observed as they implement the lesson. Technology specialists with support from the DEA will collect a random sampling of student portfolios and use a rubric to assess them for evidence of positive attitudes toward reading and growth in skill development in the ability to develop global understanding, interpreting information and responding critically and personally to a variety of reading materials. Participating teachers will use the same rubric to assess their students' progress. Technology specialists with support from the DEA will collect a random sampling of student portfolios and use a rubric to assess them for evidence of positive attitudes toward writing, the ability to write for a variety of audiences and purposes. Participating teachers will use the same rubric to assess their students' progress. Ongoing assessment will be conducted using the 5 types of assessments to monitor and assess student progress. The compilation of all assessments during a marking period will then be evaluated to report progress on report cards and at parent conferences. The assessments are 1) observations of students during read aloud, shared reading, guided reading, independent reading, modeled writing, shared/interactive writing, writing workshop, journal writing, 2) running records after guided reading with retells and running records of independent reading with retells, 3) integrated performance tasks (benchmark performance tasks/commercial or MCPS) 4) portfolio sampling including writing samples, teacher conference notes, anecdotal records, and work samples and 5) reading logs of number of books read by students and the level of the books. Dissemination will take many forms. One method of dissemination will be turn around training, where participating teachers and specialists take what they have learned and teach it to non-participants. Training handouts and activities created as a result of this project will be posted on the MCPS web and within MCPS' conferencing and e-mail system. The result of the MCPS DEA evaluation will be reported in a pamphlet and will include comments and implications by teacher. Summaries and updates will be included in the MCPS Early Childhood newsletter and the MCPS Global Access Update. This project model will be presented at the National Education Computing Conference in June of 1998 and at other local, state and national conferences.

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