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Colleen Muller-Robb

EDUI 6350

2/4/17

Case Study for Technology Implementation

Access to technology in Title 1 schools is paramount to long term

student success. Many of the students that attend Title 1 come from

socioeconomically disadvantaged households. This too holds true for

the students that attend Ida Jew Academy located in East Side San

Jose. 80% of the students that attend this district run charter are Latino

and qualify for free or reduced lunch, thus indicating their

socioeconomic status. Nonetheless, the school is doing everything in

its power to find ways to develop their Science Technology Engineering

and Math (STEM) program. All students that attend this charter develop

their critical thinking, communication, engineering, and technology

skills in all grade levels, K-8.

Background

When Ida Jew Academy was established in 2013 the school

established the following three academies: Academic Language

Academy-Spanish (ALAS), Visual and Performing Arts (VAPA) and STEM.

The students at IJA focus on all the necessary skills to become


proficient in all three academies. Since the STEM academy was

established it has evolved over time to further meet the needs of their

21st century students. The most recent revamp to the program was in

the beginning of 2016. The STEM curriculum team found that many of

the students were still lacking the necessary technology to be

competitive in the 21st century educational environment.

As a result, the team adapted the previous curriculum and kept

the essential skills of science, math and engineering, yet focused on

ways to develop the essential technology skills; specifically on typing

speed, navigation, and using a variety of productivity and education

applications. To ensure that all grade levels were represented on the

STEM team one teacher from each grade level K-8th was expected to be

present at all STEM curriculum planning meetings leading up to the

2016-2017 school year. The STEM team also met for a week during

summer to complete the curriculum and prepare for the roll out for the

coming school year.

Description

Ida Jew Academy purchased two more Chromebook carts as well

as a new Ipad cart for the 2016-2017 school year. This brings the total

to 8 Chromebook carts and 3 Ipad carts that students have access to

during the school day. Since there are not enough Chromebook carts or

Ipad carts to allow allocate one per class many grade levels have to
share a cart making equal opportunity essential. Some of the younger

grade teachers have opted to use the Ipads since many of their

students have been exposed to the interface at home.

To ensure that all students are practicing the identified

technology skills that are currently lacking, the STEM team agreed that

each class is to incorporate technology skills at least three days a

week, not including computer lab time. The team argued that the only

way to develop the necessary skills was to embed technology into daily

curriculum, ideally in the areas of science, language arts, and math.

This new curriculum was planned to be a two year phase. The first

year, 2016-2017, the teachers would set up and regularly use Google

classroom as well as the Google productivity applications (Docs,

Sheets, Slides, Forms, Sites, etc).

Image 1: https://oit.utk.edu/accounts/email/PublishingImages/google-

apps-final.gif

One of the biggest challenges that the team faced was finding

time to support teachers that had limited exposure to the productivity

applications. Come to find out, only a handful of teachers at the school


felt comfortable with all the Google productivity applications. To

address this concern, the team created a how to booklet, using

Google Docs, so that teachers could refer to it as they were beginning

to plan their school year. However, many of the veteran teachers were

reluctant to create their Google classroom and felt that the Google

applications were not applicable to their teaching styles. To remedy

this pushback, the team relied on the principles support to A. get the

necessary training for the teachers and B. ensure that technology

usage was a part of his observation.

Another challenges that the team did not foresee was how the

technology was going to be divvied up amongst the grade level teams.

Some teachers scheduled the technology more frequently than others

causing strife between certain teachers. It also brought to the teams

attention that due to the number of out of service laptops/Ipads in

their cart they were not able to assign one per student. As a result,

they would be viewed as out of compliance in the newly implemented

STEM curriculum. To ensure that each child was getting individual

access to the technology the team reassigned carts depending on the

number of students in the class. This made for some confusion

however it was quickly overcome and the challenge diffused.

Conclusion and Implication of the Project

There are many advantages that have been noted so far this

year after implementing the improved STEM curriculum. Many of the


lower grade teachers feel that they have seen their students become

more comfortable using the technology itself as well as navigating

educational and productivity applications. All of the middle school

teachers have noted improved typing speed as well as ability to use

multiple Google suite applications to compete a collaborative project.

The principal has also observed student growth in using the desired

technology as well as the requested applications.

Conversely, there have also been many disadvantages to

implementing the project. One of the most glaring disadvantages is the

lack of student data collected at the beginning of the school year. A

Google Form was sent out to teachers asking them to gauge where

their students fell on a variety of technology-based questions. The data

that was collected was not credible since it was the teachers

judgments and not actual student results. It would have been

preferable to create 3 separate Google Forms that targeted a specific

age/grade level range, for instance K-2, 3-5, 6-8 and have the students

complete the form. In doing so, the STEM team would be able to gather

accurate data over the course of the school year. Another possible

challenge is that this project is still on-going and therefore cannot be

measured or defined as successful. Though teachers have noted

student growth in the three focus areas, there is still half of a year left

to take into account.


All things considered, I believe that in time this STEM curriculum

will great impact student productivity and ability to be competitive in

the 21st century college and career environments.

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