Home PublicationsL&LIssuesVolume 26 (1998-1999) February (No. 5)

The Tool Kit An Innovative Approach to Technology Integration in Networked Schools  By Kevin McGillivray

A “tool kit” approach can be a highly successful way to support school- and districtwide technology integration. As Kevin McGillivray describes it, the kit includes general purpose tool software that is installed on all computers in four schools. The tool kit not only helps teachers receive the support they need to use technology but also helps students master technology quickly.

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Until now, technology integration in education has been piecemeal. Purchases have been made fitfully and without planning—a few computers here, some software there. These purchases are usually driven by the needs of one person or just a few people who are deeply interested in procuring technology for a classroom or lab rather than the technology needs of an entire school.

With multiple and disparate software programs around a school, supporting the teachers who are using the software in any effective way becomes virtually impossible from a technicalor educational perspective. Today, as school communities look at broad-based technology purchases—oftenincluding resources for entire school populations and classrooms—we must address the ways we approach the software needs within a school and the support required to ensure that the software will be appropriately used by teachers and students in their classrooms and projects.

Taking a Different Approach

Rather than use the same piecemeal approach to implementing technology, the Hanau Model Schools Partnership (HMSP) chose instead a “tool kit” approach to software support. The HMSP assembled a kit of common software applications that would support technology integration in all subjects and grade levels for the schools involved. As a three-year technology-integration initiative funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the HMSP included four K-12 schools on the U.S. Army’s Hanau, Germany, base; the Hessen district office in on the Rhein-Main Air Base; the Department of Defense Education Activities (DoDEA); and the project mentors from TERC in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Although NSF funding has ended, the Hessen district has contracted with private parties to continue aspects of the HMSP and to add more schools.

In this article, I describe how the tool kit approach focused and intensified school technology integration work, anchored professional development, increased the sense of professional community among teachers, increased student content and technology learning, and provided links to family and community.

Community-Based Planning for Technology Integration

The partnership’s main goal was to integrate technology throughout the four Hanau schools. In every classroom, it would place at least two computers that would be networked and have e-mail and Internet access. For more intensive project-based computer work, the students would also be able to visit networked computer clusters or labs individually or as a class. The HMSP’s plans grew from the belief that technology would become a powerful tool that would support all grade levels and all curriculum areas. The Hanau Implementation Team (HIT) was formed to make this belief a reality.

One of the first problems the group encountered was choosing the software tool kit. This cross-school decision-making body included all critical stakeholders: teachers, administrators, parents, representatives of the Hanau Education Association (a branch of the NEA), and the military base support battalion.

Putting the Tool Kit Together

The HIT selected a set of software tools that could be used across grade levels and curriculum areas. The expectations were that by using a common set of software tools throughout the schools (1) professional development for our teachers could be provided in mixed grade level and curriculum groups, and (2) shared tools would provide a gentler learning curve for both teachers and students by exposing them to the tools in virtually every classroom.

For us, it was equally important to have a manageable number of tools in the kit. As the educational technologist for the HMSP, I would need to be able to assist teachers with all of these tools and help them make good decisions about what software would facilitate and deepen student learning. The following factors contributed to tool selection:

As a result of the HIT planning, almost all of our schools’ computers have the model schools tool kit (see Figure 1).

Anchoring Professional Development

The HMSP sought to provide a balanced mixture of formal and informal professional-development experiences. These included formal workshops and informal daily support for teachers that would support and reinforce their teaching.

Approximately 120 educators in four schools had a wide variety of needs, and HMSP had to leverage all possible resources. When the partnership began, many of the teachers were inexperienced computer users. Indeed, some had never used a computer at all and had great difficulty manipulating the mouse. The concept of placing computers in every classroom was intimidating to these beginners. Other teachers were experienced and could serve as mentors and workshop leaders.

Formal professional-development workshops for the partnership included two-week summer workshops, day-long workshops during the school year, short afternoon workshops for small groups, and weekend workshops throughout the year. Consultants provided by TERC, school district technology experts such as me, and teachers in the Hanau schools have all served as workshop instructors. Graduate credit was arranged for all of the workshops one week or longer. Because the workshops concerned the common tool kit, teachers from all grade levels participated together. (See “Professional Development with the Tool Kit.”)

Informal workshops include minisessions with teachers during their preparation periods, short after-school workshops, and in-class combined presentations to students and teachers. When I work with students, the classroom teacher sometimes sits at a workstation and learns with them.

The tool kit provides the software for both formal and informal professional-development experiences, but the focus is on the curriculum and how the tool can assist and deepen student learning. The tool is taught in the context of the curriculum.

Effects of the Common Tool Kit

Increasing Professional Collegiality and Breaking out of Traditional Boxes

One unexpected outcome of the tool kit approach has been the strengthening of collegial relations among teachers within and between schools as they integrate technology. Teachers are discussing school-related issues, helping one another solve technology problems, and sharing technology-based projects. Experts on software tools have emerged in schools, and their colleagues are quick to ask for their help.

Elementary teachers share project ideas and assist each other with the technology skills needed. In the middle and high schools, teachers collaborate on cross-curricular projects with their students, using common technology tools. For example, two ninth-grade teachers, one English and one science, collaborated on a project using Inspiration to map science experiment results and organize their lab reports. Students used Word to write their reports, and they included scanned images and digital photos. The science teacher assisted students with the experiment and recording and interpreting data, and the English teacher helped students organize their data into meaningful and stylistically correct reports. Both teachers helped the students use the Internet for further research. The science teacher graded the science content, and the English teacher graded for style and grammar. Both teachers were enthusiastic about the project and its success. Again, the project content was not “technology” itself, but technology was used throughout and helped students prepare a quality report of their experiment and research.

Sue Doubler, TERC science specialist and faculty member at Lesley College (Cambridge, Massachusetts), was one of the consultants brought to our schools this year to co-teach with our teachers. Doubler worked with elementary teachers and middle school teachers in their classrooms to teach the use of visual technology tools to study weather. Her visit led to an in-house co-teaching experience between a middle school teacher and an elementary teacher and a collaborative project between their students. These two teachers co-taught at the middle school first, and then the middle school teacher took some of her students to the elementary school to assist those students in using technology to explore weather. They used QuickTime movies and the Internet during these units. Again, the common tools allowed teachers and students to move out of their traditional boundaries and explore in meaningful ways.

Increasing Student Content and Technology Learning

When the HIT decided on a common tool kit, the goal was for students to master the tools quickly, but their progress exceeded my expectations. As I viewed student work last year, I was amazed at the changes from the year before. The students’ work with computers is more fluid and natural. They understand the common software interface. I am also amazed to watch student software “experts” emerge in each school—much as teacher experts have. I now see teachers relying on students to help other students with technology questions as they work on projects. Student work with technology has become far more sophisticated this year, with students carefully checking their writing. As I watch third graders using Word’s spelling- and grammar-check functions, I see them discussing the options presented. In one elementary school, fifth graders and their teacher regularly help kindergarten students use the software. At the other elementary school, I have watched second graders teach The Graph Club to fourth graders.

Traditionally, word processing and spreadsheet use have been taught in middle and high school computer science classes. However, many of the students who are now entering middle and high school already use these tools every day. As a result of the HMSP and the common tool kit, the traditional computer science curriculum needs to be adjusted to meet students’ more advanced needs.

Because the tools are used across the curriculum, students learn them in multiple venues. A student may first be exposed to PowerPoint for an oral presentation in an English class and then use it soon after in a world history or science class. Each teacher contributes to the student’s mastery of the tool. Because the students use the tool frequently, their mastery becomes more rapid and their work more sophisticated.

The changes I have seen in the ways students use technology in schools has been powerful. Just as teachers struggled (and some still struggle) to integrate technology into their own work, students’ early work was forced and somewhat clumsy. A good example can be seen in the changes in the way they use the Internet. Students first used Internet search engines with little success. Searches involved typing one-word requests that often brought millions of responses. Now students use a variety of search engines and techniques, and they are more patient with the results. They better understand how to do their research in intelligent ways. This fall, for example, I passed a cafeteria table at lunch time and heard a group of fourth-grade students debating the merits of their favorite search engines; I was astonished by the depth of their knowledge.

Many classrooms now view their classroom computers as reference desks or encyclopedia sets. To answer questions raised in class, some students move to the workstation and share what they find with the rest of the class.

Providing Links to Family and Community

More than 100 parents and community members participated in HMSP technology workshops this past year, receiving 20 hours of training in the tool kit software components. Many of them have become regular volunteers, helping with technology projects in classrooms and labs. Two schools remain open one evening each week for students and parents to work together in the media centers. The media specialists help parents use and understand the tool kit software, which is also available at the post exchange (the PX or Army’s own department store). Parents often duplicate our tool kit on their home computers to better help their children with their projects. The software’s availability, parental training, and parental inclusion on the HIT and in the tool-kit selection process have all helped bring parents into our schools and our community closer together.

Conclusion

Integrating technology into our schools can be an overwhelming task. Schools across the United States are rapidly acquiring technology, networking buildings, and planning professional development. Software and Internet-based packages for education are proliferating. Teachers are being asked to integrate technology into multiple subjects and grade levels and to use technology for their planning and administrative duties.

In the HMSP, we needed to select tools and consider their potential for meeting multiple educational and administrative needs very carefully. By linking professional development and classroom technology activities to a common tool kit of broadly applicable software programs, we leveraged the technology in powerful ways that support the development of schools as high-performance educational communities. And this common tool kit also became an important means by which families could be linked to their students’educational experiences.

Kevin McGillivray, KMcGillivray@compuserve.com

Resources | Online Supplement

Professional Development with the Tool Kit

As my children were growing up, they never asked me to teach them to hammer nails or saw wood or drill holes. They did ask, however, if we could build a birdhouse, a go-cart, or any of several dozen other projects that allowed me to teach them to use tools to create and solve problems. As they got older, they became more curious and began to use tools in more complex and innovative ways. Finding the right tools to solve the problem became the issue, and if I was lucky enough to be at home when they were experimenting with my tools, I could help them make the right choice.

Today, as I look at teachers’ needs in our technology-integration project, I still believe that defining the problem and finding the right tools to solve it are the best approaches to teaching and learning. There must be a need for learning to take place and become deeply ingrained. “Tool-focused” workshops may have their place, but teachers are better served by workshops that direct them toward technology that supports their curricula—whether that’s through curriculum-centered or project-centered workshops.

In the Hanau schools, our workshops are now driven by the curriculum and the need to find better ways to serve teachers and students. If a school technology committee or group of teachers asks for a workshop with a particular tool (say, HyperStudio, digital camera, Cruncher, or Word), I find out why they want this workshop—how do they intend to use the tool—and that becomes our focal point. Build a birdhouse, don’t learn to hammer and saw.

Recently, a colleague and I taught “Digital Portfolios and Multimedia Techniques,” a week-long workshop. In addition to using HyperStudio to create digital portfolios, we used PowerPoint, Word, Inspiration, digital cameras, scanners, a CD-ROM writer to create CDs of all projects, and a television and VCR with a scan converter to print projects to video. Teachers discussed ways that students could use digital portfolios, examined and discussed rubrics for evaluating multimedia projects, and collaborated on HyperStudio templates that could serve as “ready-made-cards” for students’ first software efforts. In other words, the teachers prepared themselves to teach the students to “build a birdhouse.” (View handouts from this workshop.)

“The Teacher Associate and Mathland” is another recent workshop taught by colleagues. Mathland is the DoDEA’s curriculum in our schools, and the Teacher Associate is software designed to help DoDEA teachers with their daily lesson plans, grading, observations, and more. Showing teachers how the software could help them meet the Mathland objectives and standards each day was far more valuable to them than if the workshop was simply about how to use the Teacher Associate.

In “Data and Graphing, On and Off Computer: Beyond Just Doing It,” consultant Cathy Miles Grant reports on a series of workshops she ran for elementary teachers (the report is available at http://modelschools.terc.edu). Cathy’s excellent work has helped teachers make good decisions about when to use electronic graphing tools such as Graph Club, Cruncher, and Excel.

Teachers have always known that when students have a need to know, they will learn. This may be even more true for adult learners. Learning with technology often is not easy for inexperienced adults, but if we can reach them where they need to know, then their learning becomes more valuable and longer-lasting.

Resources

Copyright © 1999, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education). All rights reserved.