Kids seem to be engaging in risky online behavior at an increasingly younger age every year. When I recently asked 4th graders where they go online, they rattled off the names of sites I had only heard from teenagers not long ago. So I decided it was time to combat these issues with a strong message about Internet safety. And who can talk about the Net with greater authority than a teenager?

So, with the help of our high school internship coordinators, I managed to round up 20 willing students and convinced them to give up their first day of summer vacation and several others to meet with me. They completed iSafe's online training to certify them as iMentors and they explored the videos and real life stories on the NetSmartz teen site. Then we rehearsed the NetSmartz Assemblies for K-2 and 3-5.

The teens presented 40 assemblies at 20 schools in 4 days! The elementary students loved the presentations. They were very engaged and had a memorable experience. One parent later told me her 8 year old son saw her using the computer and said, "Mom, you're not sharing your personal information online, are you?" The kids took home an Internet Safety Pledge to help initiate these types of home discussions.

The whole experience was positive for everyone. The teens even received recognition from our Board of Education.  Next steps? We're talking about doing parent presentations and going into elementary classrooms to do followup lessons. Maybe we'll even work up the courage to venture into the world of middle schoolers! Whatever the next adventure may be, our Web Safety Taskforce is ready for the challenge!

Schools Represented: Bemis, Carter, Dunn, Eisenhower, Kolb, Kucera, Milor, Morgan, Morris, Myers, Simpson.

The committee held this special meeting to review the latest version of the gradebook component available for our current student information system, eSchool Plus. Below are some key features and important notes from this review.

Teacher View:

1. Standards: Teachers can associate an assignment to one or more standards/competencies. These are pre-loaded at the district level and associated to specific courses. The overall score for a standard/competency can be the average, highest, etc. based on settings at the district level. Teachers can click the Competencies tab to see all assignments associated to a particular standard/competency.
2. Rubrics: A built-in rubric tool provides common district rubrics and teacher-created rubrics. Teachers can also copy common rubrics to customize them if desired. Teachers can then use the electronic version of the rubric to score a student's work.
   
3. Categories of Assignments: Categories (project, quiz, homework, etc.) are identified at the district/site level and teachers then select from this list the ones they want to use. They then designate the weight, rules for lowest and missing scores, etc.
4. Grading Scales: These are established at the district/site level and the teacher selects the scale to apply to a class. They can then choose to assign a different scale to individual students for special needs populations.
5. Entering Assignments & Grades:
   
• As with all gradebook programs, the teacher enters the assignment name, due date, category, description if desired, points/weight.
  
• They can also attach files and decide when the assignment and students' scores are published for parents/students to view. 
• Assignments can be copied to additional classes in the teacher's gradebook.
  
• When entering grades, teachers can add a pre-set or free text comment to an individual student's score and decide if that comment is available for parents/students.
  
• NOTE: Parent access will be available at no additional cost, but the ability for teachers to enter assignments and grades from home will require an additional yearly investment estimated at $43,000 for the district.
  
6. Students: New students automatically appear in the gradebook just as they do in the attendance screen. Teachers can hide/show inactive students' grades. If a student transfers from one class to another, the gradebook grades do not transfer, even if they remain with the same teacher and have the same assignments.
7. Students' Grades in Other Classes: A teacher can see their students' report card grades in all classes, but not the current gradebook grades in their other classes.
   
8. Report Card Integration: A single click will auto-load grades from the teacher's gradebook into the report card and progress report screen. Teacher can then review both numeric score and letter score as well as previous term's grades to make final adjustments as needed before clicking the button to submit the final grades.
9. Reports: Teachers can print a variety of different reports for one or more students including detailed individual report, missing scores, assignment average charts, class average, and score threshold (list of students scoring below a certain score on a particular assignment).

Administrator & Counselor View: While the committee did not have time to actually view this side of the system, some important points were highlighted.

1. Grade Details: They can view the student's report card summary and click on a grade to see a snapshot of the gradebook assignments that class grade was based on. 
2. Published Classwork: They can see all the published gradebook entries for all the student's courses.

Parent/Guardian View: Parents will be able to use the Home Access view at no additional cost to the district.

1. Multiple Children: A parent can access all their children's grades from one login.
2. Current Grades: They can view the gradebook assignments, scores, and comments the teacher has chosen to publish. They can also view percentages by category (i.e. average on tests) and overall grade.
3. Graduation/Pathway/A-G Requirements: parents can see each of these lists and their child's current credits for each requirement. For example, the Graduation Requirements list would show all the courses and credits required to graduate from high school and their child's current credit earnings for each item.
4. Transcript: Parents can view their child's current transcript online.
5. eChalk Integration: It is possible to integrate eChalk and eSchool's parent access so they would have one login to access both systems. However, this would require an additional yearly cost estimated at $2,000.

Pilot Program: The district will be seeking schools with a large percentage of teachers willing to pilot the gradebook program in the 2010-2011 school year. Principals will be asked to poll their staff.

If you have any questions or comments, please email Noelle Kreider at nkreider@rialtoschools.org or post a comment to this blog post.

Presented to the RIMS Technology Leaders Network Meeting
alternate view

I believe the number one priority for technology in every classroom should be an up-to-date teacher computer (less than 4 years old) and an LCD projector. Without these two tools, teachers have a very difficult time integrating teacher or student use of technology in their everyday instruction. They must have this hardware to model and guide the use of technology as a tool in the content they teach. If you are so lucky as to have these tools available to you, other technologies begin to vie for your attention and money. I have found an interactive tablet such as eInstruction's MOBI (currently $399) to be the perfect compliment to the computer and LCD projector. Cathy Cronk, Math Coordinator for San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools, referred to the computer and projector as a "ball and chain" that keeps the teacher in the front of the room instead of moving around to address students' needs and behavior. The interactive tablet frees you from this ball and chain and also provides several other features to significantly improve instruction.

1. Control any computer program from anywhere in the classroom. Whatever you need to do with the computer, you can do it while you are moving around, helping students, checking their work, and keeping them on task.
   
2. Mark up any computer display using the tools provided with the tablet's software. For example, when using a website to compliment your curricular materials, you can highlight, circle, and write on the page as you help students apply literacy and comprehension strategies to electronic content.
3. Capture every step of your instruction and go back to it at any time. With a traditional whiteboard, you have limited writing space - when you run out, you have to erase and can't revisit it later. With the tablet's software, you can just add a new page. Your board space is limitless and everything you write is saved to go back to at any point in the lesson.
   
4. Provide visual support to lesson closure and review. Now when you say, "Remember when we...," you can actually show it again! This is critical for English learners especially, but every learner remembers better when auditory information is supported by visuals. 
5. Use virtual manipulatives and interactive simulations included in the software. Need to show how to measure the angle of a triangle? Pull up the onscreen protractor or the flash-animated triangle that lets you drag any vertex to see how the angles change. Learn more about these built-in tools and how they address various content areas on eInstruction's website.
6. Post your lesson online or print it for students who need further review. You can save the lesson as a pdf file or you can use the multimedia tools to create a video of the entire lesson complete with everything that was displayed, your annotations and your voice.

Some have asked me about interactive boards or smartboards. My response is, for the cost of one smartboard, you can equip at least three teachers with an interactive tablet AND give them the ability to move around the room. I think the smartboard is another tool that ties the teacher to the front of the room. The tablet uses the same software and provides the same functionality while eliminating the "ball and chain" problem.

In terms of which tablet to buy, you definitely want to evaluate the software that comes with it. It should have more than just the ability to write on the screen. Be sure to contact the company for a demonstration and talk to current users. Some of the reasons I prefer the MOBI over others is the fact that you can incorporate ExamView test questions, the RF receiver makes the connection easy and trouble-free, and if a teacher later decides to incorporate clickers (class response systems), the on-board screen display lets the teacher see results while still moving around the room.

As a final note, when selecting tools for your classroom, make sure they allow you to do more than what you were doing with traditional classroom tools. New technologies should transform your teaching, not just put a pretty new wrapper on what you were already doing. They should do more than just increase student engagement - this is always a temporary result of new technology, but wanes over time. The new capabilities should be significant enough to be worth the investment for several years. Make sure your investment will allow you to address specific student needs in a new and effective way that could not be done with less expensive or complicated tools - keep it simple, but make it powerful!

I am honored to have the opportunity to speak to future math and science teachers at the Western Regional NOYCE Conference today.

Participants, please join the discussion online. (This will disappear on 4/14/10.) Afterward, please complete my online evaluation. Thank you!