2. This is what MDE states as the use of the grant purpose Enhancing Education Through Technology (Ed Tech) – ARRA To provide funds to support initiatives that promote the integration of technology with instruction, develop information and technology literacy skills for students and teachers, apply technology to learning to increase student engagement and achievement, and develop professional development (PD) opportunities for teachers in the integration of technology with instructional practice.
3. Three goals of this project: Increase student achievement through the use of technology, in the Minnesota Academic Standards for all students in grades K-12 of the ECHO Charter School Enhance the ability of teachers to embed and use technology within their classrooms. Prepare teachers to use 21st Century skills when planning and instructing lessons or units.
4. What will this Ed Tech do for ECHO Charter? Offer an organized professional development program in technology. Provide a full-time person to coach the staff in building their technology skills Provide “Just in Time” training for all staff, students, and families of ECHO Charter. $$$ (stipends) for teachers
6. What will be required of teachers? Phase I: January 2010 – May 2010 $200
7. Provide “Just in Time” training for all staff, students, and families of ECHO Charter. Atomic Learning
8. What will be required of teachers? Phase II: June 2010 – June 2011 $600
9. What part do students play in this project? All students in Grades 5-10 will be given the Tech Skills Student Assessment from Atomic Learning in both January and September 2010, and again in May of 2011. Students will be assessed as usual using NWEA and MCA Assessments
10. Other benefits: All staff, students, and their families are eligible to use the Atomic Learning website and all the tutorial training videos. Funds available to cover the cost of substitutes for teachers to attend one off-site technology workshop Time to handle technology issues that have been neglected.
11. Phase III: June 2011 – and beyond The ultimate goal of this initiative is to enable teachers to be self sufficient and create an environment of self sustaining technology integration where everyone speaks the same language and understands the concepts involved with 21st Century learning Teachers explore digital alternatives to reading texts, workbooks, and textbooks Teachers use technology seamlessly to differentiate instruction within their classrooms. Teachers request specific software that will enable them to use technology more efficiently and effectively within their classrooms
Increase student achievement through the use of technology, in the Minnesota Academic Standards for all students in grades K-12 of the ECHO Charter SchoolEnhance the ability of teachers to embed and use technology within their classrooms.Prepare teachers to use 21st Century skills when planning and instructing lessons or units.
This program will act very much like our current Q-Comp program. We’ll have monthly topics that will follow through to our weekly PLC groups. We will use Atomic Learning to guide our topics for technology skills. We will also be ordering resource books for each teacher to use within their PLC groups.Overall, this program will offer us the ability to have a more organized, goal oriented, measureable program which we set as a goal in our 2008-2011 Technology Plan. It’s a nice tidy bundle that all works together.
The first phase of this grant is going to emphasis learning the basis technology skills that we will need in order to advance to Phase II, which is understanding 21st Century skillsThe five teacher pieces of this phase include: Complete the Tech Skills Student Assessment through Atomic LearningThe student assessment focuses on basic skills like word processing, data bases, spreadsheets, copying, pasting, internet skills, adding pictures and graphics.Create an individual Teacher Proficiency Plan based on the results of your assessmentTogether, we’ll take a look at these results and see what areas you’d like to focus on for a goal. Its okay if you have lots of areas or only a few. You can choose what skills you’d like to learn.Attend at least 80% of the PLC meetingsThis should be easy, we already are doing this to meet our Q-Comp goal.Attend at least 80% of the monthly Professional Development workshopsThis, too, shouldn’t be too difficult. We already do this.Incorporate and document at least one technology integration activity or project in your classroom or in collaboration with other teachersHopefully this shouldn’t be too challenging for any of us. Once we have a better understanding of the technology we have and the Atomic Learning program, this won’t be too difficult either. It will just take some planning, and that is what I’m here to help you accomplish.
The main focus and goal of professional development during this phase will be to introduce the 21st Century skills and other topics related to our global society.There will also be a technology component in our usual evaluations.
