Name of Applicant District:
District Application Cover Page
District: / Bartlett / Date: / 10 Dec 2009Project Manager: / Amelia Emery
Position Title: / Technology Educator/Coordinator
Mailing Address: / JBES, Main Street, Bartlett, NH 03812
Email Address: /
Phone: / 603-374-2331
BE SURE TO READ ALL OF THE FOLLOWING
I hereby certify that:1. To the best of my knowledge, the information contained in this application is correct, and the school board of the district named above has authorized me as its representative to submit this application.
2. The District has submitted to the New Hampshire Department of Education (NHDOE) a General Assurances signature page for the current year.
3. The District has consulted with the appropriate non-public schools during the design and development of this Ed Tech project prior to all decisions that affect the opportunities of private school children to participate in the program.
4. All funding for this project will be obligated and reported no later than the quarterly report ending 3/31/2011 and expended and reported no later than quarterly report ending 6/30/2011.
5. The grant funds expended will supplement, not supplant, funds from non-federal sources.
6. The District will keep records and provide information to the NHDOE as may be required for program evaluation, consistent with responsibilities under NCLB Title II-D as outlined within the Grant Request for Proposals (e.g., surveys, reports, ARRA monthly reports).
7. The schools to be funded by this program are compliant with the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) because the district employs a filtering mechanism for student access OR because Ed Tech funds referenced in this application will NOT be used to purchase computers used to access the Internet or pay for direct costs associated with accessing the Internet.
Superintendent of Schools (blue ink preferred) Date
Please also snail mail a signed original of ONLY this page to:
Dr. Cathy Higgins, Office of Educational Technology
New Hampshire Department of Education
101 Pleasant Street, Concord, NH 03301
Application Form for 21st Century Classrooms ProjectDistrict / ENTER YOUR DISTRICT NAME (not your SAU number) HERE
Digital Tools / Indicate the primary configuration of digital tools that will be used in your project classrooms to create a 1:1 environment (CHOOSE ONLY ONE):
Sub-notebooks/ mini-laptops / netbooks
Standard laptops
Handheld computers (e.g., Palm, Nintendo DS, iTouch, etc.)
Combination of laptops, cameras, and other tools
Other computer configurations (please describe briefly:NEO 2 word processors)
Number of Classrooms / Indicate the classrooms involved in this project:
There will be 2 classrooms in grade 1 configured with a 1:1 environment.
There will be 2 classrooms in grade 2 used as control groups, with ratios greater than 1:1.
Teachers / Indicate the teachers that will be involved (add as many lines as necessary):
Last Name / First Name / Email
Eldridge / Jackie /
Swain / Lucie /
Perkins / Joyce /
Couture / Kim /
Administrators / Indicate the administrators that will be involved (add as many lines as necessary):
Last Name / First Name / Email
Voci / Joseph /
Evaluation Workshop Attendees / Provide the names AND email addresses of 2 representatives who can attend the grants workshop in December, if awarded:
Last Name / First Name / Email
Eldridge / Jackie /
Couture / Kim /
Project Abstract (10 Points)
Our goal is to become one of NH’s first 21st century showcase schools. By combining 21st century technology tools (interactive whiteboards, teacher laptops, projectors, student response systems, document cameras, Flips, NEO2’s, printers) with intense job-embedded professional development, we’ll transform our school into the education portal of the future. We’ll answer the essential question, “Will 1:1 NEO2 word processors change the way our teachers teach and students learn?” Focus will be writing, technology and scientific inquiry.
Project Description (30 Points)
Let us introduce ourselves…The Josiah Bartlett Elementary School (JBES) is a small rural school located in the heart of the White Mountains. We are a K-8 school with 70 staff members (21 classroom teachers) working together for our 286 students, a community preschool, and a public/school library on the premises. Eleven percent of our students are serviced by Title I staff, 15 % are a part of our special education program and 32 % are included in our free and reduced lunch program. According to a recent survey, 94% of our students have access to a computer at home and 86% have Internet access at home. Our school and community are tightly connected and enjoy a strong, positive relationship. In fact, during our last school district meeting, we were the only school in the general area that received full support of our budget requests.
The community connection has been strong, as we have traveled the road to technology infusion. In 1998, fifty community members came together and wired the entire school. That wiring is still in place and is a solid base of our technology infrastructure. Over the past decade, the community has passed every technology warrant article we have put before them. We have a committed community, passionate teachers, respectful students, devoted parents and an administration that strongly supports us. If we receive the funds from this grant, we know we can soar and provide an excellent model for others to follow.
Our grades one through six all loop and have been for 12 years; students and teachers stay together for two years. Some of the benefits we have found of looping include: eliminates transition issues from year to year; instruction can begin right away when the second school year begins; students are familiar with the dynamics of the classroom; the parent and home situation are known, as are the social and academic needs; and tech skills are known and can continue to be built upon. We have two classrooms for each grade level. Middle school (7 and 8) is structured through a team approach with advisories.
Our Technology Committee decided our goals for this grant. This committee has members from all of our teams, K-2, 3-4, 5-6, Middle School, Title I, Special Education, Unified Arts, Administration, and School Board. So, every decision we make for our school is from everyone in our school. We have full and enthusiastic involvement!
Ideally technology should change something about the way teachers teach or students learn and our essential question supports that, “Will 1:1 NEO 2 word processors change the way our teachers teach and students learn?” To answer this question, our primary goal is to create a 1:1 computing environment using NEO 2 word processors in two of our four grade 1-2 looping classrooms. They will be our intervention group. The other two classrooms will be the control group and work with a 3:1 ratio of NEO’s.
Our grant request is two-fold – our secondary goal is to provide 21st Century tools to our K-8 classrooms (interactive whiteboards, teacher laptops, Flip video cameras, projectors, student response systems, document cameras, NEO 2 Alpha Smart word processors, printers). We will also provide teachers without a laptop with a new system.
Our focus is on four areas: improving writing (currently 37% of our students are substantially below or partially below proficient in writing as noted on the Fall 2008 NECAP results); Scientific Inquiry and Critical Thinking Skills; and Science Skills for Information, Communication and Media Literacy (6th grade- 35% Substantially Below Proficient or Partially Proficient - No students were Proficient with Distinction and 7th grade- 34% Substantially Below Proficient or Partially Proficient - No students were Proficient with Distinction) and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).
Through our one-to-one computing initiative and fusing 21st century tools throughout the school, we hope to transform our school, not just ‘add new tools’. We will begin the transformation, as we shift our literacy teachings to a more collaborative environment. Directly quoted from the New Media Literacies website, “Participatory culture shifts the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to community involvement. The new literacies almost all involve social skills developed through collaboration and networking. These skills build on the foundation of traditional literacy, research skills, technical skills, and critical analysis skills taught in the classroom.
The new skills include...
· “Play - the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving
· Performance - the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery
· Simulation - the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes
· Appropriation - the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content
· Multitasking - the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details
· Distributed Cognition - the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities
· Collective Intelligence - the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal
· Judgment - the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources
· Transmedia Navigation - the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities
· Networking - the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information
· Negotiation - the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms
· Visualization - the ability to interpret and create data representations for the purposes of expressing ideas, finding patterns, and identifying trends
from Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, (Jenkins et al. 6).”
Why did we choose the NEO 2’s for our 1:1 computing environment? We selected the NEO 2’s for many reasons related to the hardware and the software. Relating to hardware, the systems have an unbelievable 700 hours of use on three AA batteries, they are lightweight for the students to carry, very durable so you don’t have worry about them being broken, multiple font sizes so you can meet the needs of vision-challenged students and an instant on/off and save, so documents won’t be lost.
There are many excellent software tools that came as a part of the NEO 2 to increase student achievement. It has Alpha Word Plus – the word processor to edit and revise writing; KeyWords – language-based keyboarding curriculum tool that provides instant feedback; 2Know! (student response system equivalent) - lets you get instant feedback so you can tailor your lessons to your students’ needs; AccelTest – helps the teacher create quizzes, tests and other exercises to assess students’ knowledge and real-time scoring allows you to make immediate changes to your lessons; Google Docs – students and teachers can send documents back and forth between the NEO 2 and Google Docs. Also, they can save their work and be able to go to any other computer to finish (great option for our 3:1 control group). The NEO’s help with formative and summative assessment.
Before developing our plan and selecting the NEO’s, we reviewed several research studies in relation to improved student performance in writing and technology use. First, let us refer to a specific research piece we found compelling: “An AlphaSmart for Each Student: Does Teaching and Learning Change With Full Access to Word Processors?” by the Technology and Assessment Study Collaborative (Russell et al. 5). The study used classroom observation, student interviews, teacher interviews, and drawings produced by the students who were involved in the study. Importantly, we found in this research that “a ratio of approximately one word processing device (desktop, laptop or AlphaSmart) for every two students was associated with much less use of technology than occurred when every student was provided with their own AlphaSmart. And, even though AlphaSmarts were designed for word processing only, the provision and subsequent use of one AlphaSmart per student led to increased use of desktop and laptop computers. This increased use seemed to increase students comfort and skill with technology which in turn decreased the amount of time teachers spent providing students with technical support. Full access and subsequent increased use of technology also led to an increase in peer conferencing and individual instruction as well as a decrease in whole group instruction.”
Also, according to Apple’s “Research: What It Says About 1 to 1 Learning”, available research-based evidence is generally positive, especially with respect to laptop programs’ effects on technology use, technology proficiency, and writing skills”.
“Russell, Bebell, and Higgins compared the advantages for different student to computer ratios in classrooms. In a single public school, the school assigned different numbers of laptops to upper elementary grade classrooms to achieve 4:1, 2:1, or 1:1 student: computer ratios. The researchers then observed classrooms and studied how students used computers in the classes and how teachers organized their instruction. The 1:1 classrooms provided several advantages over the 2:1 and 4:1 classrooms. In 1:1 classrooms, students used computers more across the curriculum and used them at home for academic purposes. In addition, their images of what is required for writing tasks nearly always included computers. In 1:1 classrooms, instruction was different as well; there was less large-group instruction than in 2:1 and 4:1 classrooms” (“Research: What is Says” 7).
“In writing, several studies have shown that writing with a computer can increase the amount of writing students perform, and the extent to which students edit their writing (Russell and Plati).”
Probably the most definitive study to date on 1:1 computing effects on writing is Maine’s laptop initiative, “Research Brief, Maine’s Middle School Laptop Program Creating Better Writers” (Slievernail and Gritter 4). In that report they state, “Thus, the evidence indicates that implementation of Maine’s one-to-one ubiquitous laptop program has had a positive impact on middle school students’ writing. Five years after the initial implementation of the laptop program, students’ writing scores on Maine’s statewide test had significantly improved. Furthermore, students scored better the more extensively they used their laptops in developing and producing their writing. And finally, the evidence indicated that using their laptops in this fashion helped them to become better writers in general, not just better writers using laptops.” This report was specific to middle school students. It will be quite interesting to see if those results translate to better writing in lower level classrooms.