bridging the technology access gap: how one integrated ...€¦ · bridging the technology access...

ED-TECH POINT OF VIEW

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Bridging the Technology Access Gap: How One Integrated Curriculum Can Help

CONTENTS

2 Executive Summary4 A Teacher-Centric Approach6 Print, Online, or Both7 Success in California—and Elsewhere8 Final Thoughts

Supplemental curriculum that meets teachers where they are—allowing them to use it in print, online, or both

Technology has the potential to transform teaching and learning in powerful ways. For instance, it can deliver feedback to teachers nearly instantly, helping them target their instruction to meet students’ needs on the fly. And it can engage and motivate students by allowing them to track their progress toward learning goals in real time.

But technology by itself is not a solution to raising student achievement. Robert Bush,Boston-based CEO of Mentoring Minds, believes the real key to better achievement is effective teaching. And while technology is a tool that can help teachers be more successfulin their classrooms, teachers still need to employ sound pedagogy, regardless of the toolsthey are using, he says.

What’s more, despite technology’s potential to transform education, the reality is thatmany schools are still far from reaching this potential. In a recent survey from the Consortium for School Networking, 45 percent of U.S. school districts said they do notcurrently have the capacity to deploy a one-to-one computing initiative.

In fact, 34 percent of U.S. school districts reported wide-area network (WAN) speeds of 100megabits per second or less, which is one-tenth of the minimum connection speed recom-mended by the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) for WAN connections. In rural districts, the situation is even worse, with 44 percent reporting WANconnections of 100 Mbps or less and 16 percent reporting speeds of less than 10 Mbps.

Twelve percent of all school districts and 17 percent of rural districts said their typical internet connection occurs over slower technologies such as T-1, copper, DSL, or satellite—making it nearly impossible for them to reach the connection speeds of 1 gigabit per second that SETDA deems necessary for a digital transformation.


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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Bridging the Technology Access Gap: How One Integrated Curriculum Can HelpAlthough technology holds great promise in education, the reality is that manyschools don’t have the expertise or the infrastructure needed for a complete digital transformation. Total Motivation is a supplemental curriculum that meetsteachers where they are—allowing them to use it in print, online, or both.


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Learn more and watch Teams in action at teachingchannel.org/teams

Bush believes teachers need curriculum tools that meet them where theyare—resources they can integrate regardless of where they might be on the spectrum of technology use.

Infrastructure isn’t the only barrier standing in the way of ed-tech adoption. Teachers alsoreport varying degrees of comfort in using technology during instruction. For instance, in a2013 survey of more than 500 teachers conducted on behalf of PBS LearningMedia, onlyhalf said they were “comfortable experimenting with new technology.”

Bush believes teachers need curriculum tools that meet them where they are—resourcesthey can integrate regardless of where they might be on the spectrum of technology use.That’s the thought process behind Mentoring Minds’ Total Motivation, a supplemental,standards-based curriculum designed to help students learn to think critically.


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Student success begins with high-quality teaching, Bush says. And high-quality teaching occurs when educators design their lessons around the standards they want students toreach—and then build a foundation of knowledge for each standard that culminates in astudent’s ability to think critically and independently.

“If you start with the standards, and then work students from the information stage all theway through creating new knowledge, that’s very, very important,” he says. “How you getthere—how you work students through that progression and the medium you choose,whether it’s print, online, or a hybrid approach—those considerations are secondary. They should be driven by your ultimate learning objectives and the tools you have at your disposal.”

Total Motivation Math and ELA are designed to support this pedagogical approach. Thesupplemental curriculum addresses 100 percent of the Common Core State Standards formath and English language arts. Each unit begins by introducing a concept and then constructs a deeper knowledge of the topic and encourages critical thinking and reflection.

A TEACHER-CENTRIC APPROACH


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The activities are flexible enough to support any scope and sequence and include a varietyof learning tasks that cover a wide range of rigor, Bush says.

“We use a few different frameworks to describe the rigor of our activities,” he says. “We use both Webb’s Depth of Knowledge and Bloom’s Taxonomy. All of our materials arecoded to those frameworks, so teachers can easily tie them back to their schools' scopeand sequence.”

The system also includes real-time progress monitoring that helps teachers and administratorsidentify learning gaps at the district, school, class, or individual student level.

When schools adopt Total Motivation, they get both the print and digital versions. Theteacher edition is an instructional guide that offers ideas for effective instruction, while the student edition supports these ideas with focused, aligned practice activities.

The supplemental curriculum also includes the same activities in both print and digital formats. “We did that with intent,” Bush says, “because we found that if you’re switchingstudents from print to digital or vice versa, and the content is different—even if it coversthe same standard—you still lose continuity.”

With Total Motivation, however, it’s a simple transition from print to digital and back again.If teachers are using shared laptop carts, and they don’t have access to a cart on a particu-lar day—or if the wi-fi access is slow—they can pick up the print version and continue uninterrupted.

“It’s really meant to be that seamless,” Bush says. “It’s flexible by design, so the teacher is incontrol of the experience. We take a teacher-centric approach, meaning teachers are the instructional leaders in the classroom—and they make the choice of how to use it in theirclassroom.”

“It’s flexible by design, so the teacher is in control of the experience. We take a teacher-centric approach, meaning teachers are the instructional leaders in the classroom—and they make the choice of how to use it in their classroom.”


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Because Total Motivation is flexible enough to be used in print, online, or in combination,teachers can implement the learning activities in a variety of ways, depending on the technology available to them.

For example, if teachers only have an interactive whiteboard in their classroom, they canlead a group activity to introduce a concept, Bush says—and then they might have studentspractice independently at their desks using the print student editions, or online in a lab en-vironment.

If teachers have a few computers at the back of their classrooms, they can use a station-based approach, introducing a concept to the whole class and then having students breakinto groups to practice the skill or activity. When students are at the computer station, theycan work through whatever activities the teacher has assigned online.

If all students have access to mobile devices, they can work within the online system eitherindependently or by following along with the teacher in a guided approach to instruction.

“Both the offline and online experiences mirror one another, so teachers have the flexibil-ity to choose which format works best at any given time,” Bush says. “Teachers can startwith the print version but transition to digital as they have the capacity to do so—or theycan take a hybrid approach if that best suits their needs.”

And the curriculum’s modular design allows teachers to use whatever elements addresstheir needs, Bush says.

“A teacher might assign just the independent practice sections or maybe just the ‘check forunderstanding’ sections,” he says. “Critical thinking is embedded throughout the modules,but there is also a section designed to extend the learning within each module, so teachersmight assign only this section.”

As students are working in the digital version, the system automatically tracks theirprogress across each standard and skill level. When students are using the print edition,teachers can enter exam results into the system and access the analysis and monitoring capabilities—allowing them to identify students who may be falling behind.

PRINT, ONLINE, OR BOTH

“Both the offline and online experiences mirror one another, soteachers have the flexibility to choose which format works bestat any given time.”


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Either way, “you’re going to get a really strong picture of how students are performing inrelation to each standard,” he notes.

The system’s electronic dashboard is color-coded for easy analysis of student progress: Asstudents work toward mastery of a particular standard, their progress is indicated in red,yellow, or green. The dashboard provides different views depending on a user’s securityclearance; students can check their own progress online, while teachers can see theprogress of individual students or entire classes, and administrators can view progress bygrade level, school, or district.

“Users can also drill down to see responses to individual questions; it’s that granular,” Bush says.

Alice N. Stroud Elementary School in Modesto, California, is using Total Motivation to deepenstudents’ critical thinking skills and prepare them for the rigor of the California Common CoreState Standards. Third-grade teacher Lindsay Nguyen and her colleagues appreciate the curriculum’s hybrid format that includes the same materials in print and online.

At Stroud Elementary, teachers share a limited number of laptop carts. “Since our access tocomputer carts was limited to a few hours a day, it was great to have the print edition aswell, so we were able to transition between online and offline [use] without missing abeat,” Nguyen said.

Even when her students weren’t completing activities online, Nguyen was using Total Motivation’s built-in reporting feature to analyze their progress and recognize gaps in theirskills, allowing her to group students for differentiated instruction and target individual students for more one-on-one attention.

“It was great to be able to go into the reporting feature and … create my own diversegroupings within the assignment data,” said Nguyen. Total Motivation “really helps [me]gain a more holistic understanding of which students might need more individual attentionon an assignment.”

SUCCESS IN CALIFORNIA—AND ELSEWHERE

Total Motivation “really helps [me] gain a more holistic understanding of which students might need more individual attention on an assignment.”


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While technology holds great promise for education, “unfortunately the reality hasn’t keptpace with that promise in many cases,” Bush says.

He believes publishers have a responsibility to help bridge this gap in schools—and MentoringMinds is doing that by offering a high-quality supplemental curriculum that teachers canuse across any medium, wherever they might fall in the spectrum of technology use.

“I would urge other publishers: Begin with the standards in mind. Don’t go building thegreatest widget for technology’s sake, if it doesn’t really address the standards that studentsshould aspire to,” he recommends. “Also, begin with the teacher in mind. Teachers havegreat command of the content and the standards; what they need are high-quality materi-als that align with those.”

He concludes: “If you begin with the standards in mind, and you don’t look to replacegreat teaching—but you simply provide new tools to round out a teacher’s tool kit—thenyou’ll have a product that can help raise achievement regardless of the medium in which it is used. And that’s what I think we have done. We’re facilitating a great teaching andlearning experience.”

FINAL THOUGHTS

Nguyen cited the example of one student who had been having trouble with word problems. Using Total Motivation, this student was able to develop the skills she needed tosolve word problems easily. Nguyen also said she has noticed a deeper level of thinkingamong her students since she began using the curriculum.

“The group activities in particular allowed the students to think in a much deeper, muchmore rigorous way,” she said. “They were really tenacious in figuring out solutions to multi-step problems and were so happy when they were able to conquer those challenges. Hear-ing and seeing the sense of pride they had in their achievement was an incredible feeling.”

The kind of success that Nguyen has seen in her students has been validated by independ-ent research. A study led by SEG Measurement and released in 2014 found that studentsin grades 3-5 who used Total Motivation increased their math scores by an average of 23points, while reading scores increased an average of 18 points. The study analyzed theachievement of more than 700 students in reading and 700 students in math from adozen schools nationwide.

“Students who used the Motivation Math and Reading instructional materials showed significantly greater learning growth in math and reading than a comparable group of students that did not use the materials,” said Scott Ellis, president and chief operating offi-cer of SEG Measurement.


Mentoring Minds is committed to empowering teachers and students, providing customized

school-wide and district-wide solutions across the nation. A leader in critical thinking for over a

decade, Mentoring Minds delivers affordable, effective instructional resources that help students

develop the skills to succeed both in the classroom and in life. Experienced educators create

award-winning K-12 print and digital resources that integrate best practices for supplementary

instruction, learning and assessment across a range of subject areas.

Learn more at www.mentoringminds.com or call (800)585-5258.

This Ed-Tech Point of View was produced by eSchool News, a leading publisher and producerof K-12 educational technology publications and events, dedicated to the advancement and wiseuse of technology to improve teaching and learning for all.

eSchool News offers ed tech decision-makers a range of products—including magazines, white papers, websites, newsletters, webinars, and other products—that provide in-depth coverage of the latest innovations, trends, and real-world solutions impacting the education community. Explore more at www.eSchoolNews.com.

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