Keynote+Presentation

Power to the Students! An Exemplar of 21st Century Learning

The goal of our presentation is to not only to showcase our innovative and futuristic use of 21st Century technology in effort to improve student achievement, but also to excite and motivate our audiences while leaving them prepared and excited to make this type of futuristic learning happen within their own school buildings, and school systems.

Our presentation is based on our unified MSA Reading & Math Blast! program which is an action-research project designed and currently being implemented with the use of 21st Century Technology and peer-educators to increase student engagement and raise student achievement in math and reading as measured by the MSA exam. This project uses 21st Century Technology to link three BCPS schools—George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology, Eastern Technical High School, and Catonsville Middle School--in a distance-learning partnership to improve the MSA reading and math scores of students who scored at the basic level on the 2009 MSA. The project truly gives the power to the students as they act as the educators of their younger peers and run the web conferencing equipment, with minimal help from the adult educators involved.

The participants include: eighty-five members of the Baltimore County Public Schools community, including principals and educators from Catonsville Middle School, Eastern Technical High School, and George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology. The peer educators are students in Eastern Tech’s Teacher Academy of Maryland and Carver Center’s Literary Arts Department. The middle school student target group consists of thirty students currently enrolled in grades 6-8 who scored Basic in reading and/ or math on the 2009 MSA exams.

The Blast takes place at both high schools and at Catonsville Middle School via web-conferencing and an interactive wiki once per week during school hours. Students participating in Eastern Technical High School are teaching math skills, and Literary Arts students attending Carver Center for the Arts and Technology teach the Catonsville Middle School students reading skills. Both sessions utilize the use of a wiki, and interactive white boards, Vokis, interactive dabbleboards and chat features, Safari Montage Live!, Promethean software including, flip charts, Power Point (and more) as well as group and individual conferencing made possible through the use of web cameras. All sessions are taped and posted on the wiki site for review.

A typical session may begin with the high school students providing a quick overview of a skill on the web cam. Then, the middle school students work independently at their computers on their wiki pages to complete activities based on the weekly skill. Meanwhile, the high school students are logged into the same wiki page at their home schools. The high school students are each paired with a middle school student, and as the middle school students work, their high school peer tutors use a chat window (and a dabble board for math) to monitor the progress of the middle school students and to provide helpful hints and feedback. From time to time, the middle school students are invited to the web camera for a one-on-one, face-to-face dialogue about the weekly skill, with feedback geared directly towards that specific middle school student. Student progress is measured by a series of quantitative and qualitative data points including, but not limited to: classroom and web-session assessments, surveys, and observations. Data points are examined by the CMS Triangulation Team.

This program is certainly a model of 21st Century learning for BCPS as it removes the physical barriers of schools, utilizes untapped resources (our partnerships and our students), and connects BCPS in a collective effort to raise student achievement that has not been done in this way before now. When given the opportunity to showcase our efforts and to inform others on how to make this type of learning happen within their own schools, our audience will see 21st Century take place. They will not only walk away with tips for getting started, a guideline for planning their own web sessions-not limited to kids teaching kids-and ideas for assessing student work, they will also view taped sessions, wiki work, interactive dabble boards, and hear from the experts from each of the schools involved who are working to make this engaging type of learning happen. I plan to bring representatives from my middle school and from both of the high schools involved. We will be presenting a look into the program from the middle and the high school point of view.If internet access is available at the convention site, audience members may also enter the wiki site we are using and sample the results and efforts of our program first hand. We are prepared to bring our own computers, projectors, handouts and other related materials.

Our group of presenters will share and demonstrate a few of the following through both electronic and print media. • Catonsville Middle School’s Grand Central Station Wiki andersonmsareadingblast.pbworks.com • Reading Text Samples (Including plain text, Toondoos, Storybird, wordle, etc.) w/ student response samples (wiki pages) • Math Problem Samples w/ student response samples (dabbleboards) • Interactive dabbleboard demonstration • Videoconferencing Samples w/ instruction and debriefing • Student reflection samples w/ what they thought about the program (Examples will be in text and videotaped format) • Formative data information as described on our action research document • Summative data charts clearly describing the effects the program had on student engagement and academic achievement • Extension developments w/ Westchester elementary school and extended writing program w/ Carver • Photos of students using the technology • Next steps to creating your own VORSH program with sample ideas to get you started a
 * Outline**

• Whatever! Mark Treadwell—discusses the importance of using technology to engage learners and improve academic achievement. • Good to Great Jim Collins—discusses the importance of having the “right people on the bus” especially when designing and implementing innovative programs such as this one. • BCPS Blueprint for Progress—Dr. Joe Hairston—outlines Baltimore County Public Schools’ mission for the inclusion of 21st century to raise student achievement and to meet the needs of every child
 * Supporting Research**