Grant Helps School Integrate Technology into its Classroom

Cupertino Union School District’s desire to remove these barriers resulted in winning a $1.4 million multiyear Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) competitive grant, which helped fund the integration of technology into the general education classroom.

The Cupertino Union School District (CUSD), which is located in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley, consists of 20 elementary and five middle schools with a diverse student population.

The middle school language arts class, with its heterogeneous student groups, was chosen for the technology integration because research shows that student-centered classrooms, in which teachers develop skills to differentiate instruction, can support individual learning styles and help students with learning difficulties. Instructional technology expands the toolbox of strategies that teachers can use to enrich every student’s educational experience.

Each middle school had two seventh-grade language arts teachers and a special education teacher participate in the program, which involved 700 students in the district during the program’s first year. Every classroom teacher received a wireless computer lab that is connected to scanners, printers and servers, along with multimedia applications, for a rich array of technologies.

The teachers and staff were offered professional development time to support technology proficiency and integration. In addition, an EETT grant coach was hired to facilitate communications among the schools, differentiate assignments, and monitor student proficiency and technology usage.

“The [EETT] coach has been instrumental in supporting our teachers and providing insights into critical issues within the scope of the grant,” reports Michelle Mount, CUSD coordinator of instructional services.

Summer School for Teachers

Professional development for teachers and staff started at a weeklong summer institute. Each teacher received a wireless notebook PC, and training focused on the operating system and hardware, as well as the use of software applications in classroom activities. The applications ranged from Microsoft Word and PowerPoint to Inspiration software and multimedia tools.

Unscheduled time after training was used to plan technology integration into lesson plans. Teachers worked in teams to develop strategies for introducing technology into their classrooms and accommodating a range of student abilities. Using state academic content standards, the teachers created lessons in which technology was a tool for supporting student learning.

Throughout the school year, professional development days were held quarterly with the Santa Clara County Office of Education and Apple Professional Development education consultants. These training sessions were collaborative and participant driven, using projects that could be taken back to the classroom.

For teachers new to the technology, there was some worry that having 35 notebook PCs in the classroom would be overwhelming. This proved not to be the case. “The students were so pleased to have a computer that classroom management was not a problem,” says Susan Jezyk, CUSD’s grant coach.

Teachers were surprised by their students’ sense of ownership and desire to use the computers on a daily basis. Teachers and students learned technology side by side, with the students coaching other students.

Jezyk advised teachers to start with mini-projects at the beginning of the year and to learn the technology with small projects in which the content comes from the students’ own lives. The teachers later added the research component and curriculum content.

All of the participating teachers agreed that differentiating the curriculum should not mean assigning more work to faster students. Steve Burrell, a language arts teacher at Cupertino Middle School, came up with personal interest projects that students could work on when their class work was completed.

“I was worried that they would not take it seriously, but they were energized,” says Burrell. One student, for example, did a project on how the brain is affected when studying.

Peer coaching was another invaluable part of the ongoing communications among the teachers. Monthly meetings and training sessions allowed the exchange of challenges and best practices.

Teachers shared the projects that were working well. They also solicited help on the technology challenges they were encountering, as well as on differentiating the lesson plan for special-needs students.

Technical Support

The notebook computers and servers arrived last summer when most of the staff members were away. The information technology team created disk images for the teachers’ notebook PCs, including third-party software applications, to prepare the computers for summer training.

The servers were installed in the classrooms before the start of the school year. One portable classroom required an upgrade in electrical capacity to handle the new notebooks and server.

Harlin Hansen, technology resource teacher, set up the notebooks and servers. Though developing and installing the images on nearly 300 notebooks was a huge undertaking, Hansen says, “It saved hours of time [later] for the site troubleshooters who restored the crashed disks.”

As the site technology troubleshooters become more familiar with the program, their role is expected to grow. For instance, Lee Appelbaum, a technology specialist at Kennedy Middle School, wrote a tool to create student accounts on the server using the students’ administration records, which will be useful when new students enter the school next year.

A Level Playing Field

Shirley Miller, a language arts teacher at Hyde Middle School, whose mainstream classroom includes students with special needs, says, “[Technology] levels the playing field.” Finding Web sites that support the language arts curriculum and providing choices that differentiate the complexity of the material enable every student to successfully complete their projects.

Miller’s class recently studied Rudyard Kipling’s short story “ Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.” The more advanced students paired up for author interviews and biographies, while other students paired up to explore India’s local flora and fauna. Each student chose the format of his or her report, creating a slide show, newspaper article or brochure.

“The lab projects encourage higher-level thinking where students have to make decisions on their own and in teams, which is important for their future,” says Sarah Barrango, language arts teacher at Kennedy Middle School.

Barrango’s students recently filmed alternate endings to “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” a story from their literature book. “The students pitched their ideas to the movie production company—me—using both storyboards and scripts they had developed,” she says. After filming, the students added titles and credits, readying their videos for a movie premiere day in the classroom.

Karen Alyassini, Miller Middle School language arts teacher, reports that technology interests and motivates students who might otherwise tune out. For instance, one of her resource students had trouble handing in his assignments. “Using the computers this year has kept him from ‘turning off’ to school, and he gets more work done,” she says.

Next Year’s Focus

“Improving communications between classroom and home is a focus for next year,” says CUSD’s Jezyk. Teachers are planning regular communications with parents through e-mail and an EETT link on their Web sites that documents technology usage in the classroom. A quarterly newsletter also is being planned. It will focus on professional development and will highlight one or two classroom projects.

Another of next year’s goals is to store student work on the server and to make it accessible to school staff. The 2005 summer institute will present the use of student ePortfolios to share class work on the school intranet.

During the grant’s second year, two eighth-grade language arts classrooms at each middle school will reap the benefits along with their counterparts in seventh grade. The new teachers will have summer training in preparation for the coming school year, and more advanced training is available for last year’s participants. This summer’s professional development will be different, however, since last year’s participants will have classroom-tested experience to share with the group.

With next year’s program doubling to more than 20 teachers and about 1,400 students, this experience is certain to prove valuable.