http://www.shack.ca/index.php?id=23
I am currently at the CODE Summit, a conference for school boards that participated in the Special Education projects funded by the Council of Ontario Directors of Education (CODE). At my board our CODE projects were “Differentiatied Education and Leadership – Deal or No Deal” and “Reaching Exceptionalities in Academics through a Community of Hope – REACCH”. School boards are now presenting the results of their CODE projects and they are ASTOUNDING! I listened to a presentation from the Nipissing Parry Sound Catholic board and they increased some of their provincial standardized results by over 30%—that is incredible! The team from NPSC used Alphasmarts, Smartboards and later a laptop cart in the project classroom as well as Co-Writer and Write Out Loud. The stories around individual students were heart warming and moving.
A theme that kept coming up, and the headline of one of their slides was “Independent students allow for focused teaching.” Their model was to use technology to make students independent in their writing process thereby freeing up the teacher for one on one and small group interactions. They confirmed that the upfront work in teaching the kids how to use the technology was worth it in the latter part of the year when the teacher could have more meaningful interactions with her students. Their results certainly confirm their approach works!
Keywords: Education, educational technology, management, technology