First year of Hardin Co. "innovate fellowship" has brought improvements in use of classroom technology; special ed teacher: "I can spend more time with kids doing things"
News-Enterprise, Elizabethtown, April 24, 2017
Teachers find creative ways to use technology in their jobs, classrooms
Educators were a part of the HCS Innovate Fellowship, which is wrapping up its first year.
By Katherine Knott
A year ago, Brooke Whitlow, instructional technology coordinator for Hardin County Schools, wanted to create a network of teachers between the schools.
Her solution was the HCS Innovate Teacher Fellowship. It started this school year with a group of 24 fellows, one teacher from each school.
“It’s way more successful than I thought it would be,” said Lafe Tabb, director of instructional technology. “I see good things coming.”
Fellows in the program say it helped to break down barriers between schools and pushed the teachers to share rather than compete.
Over the school year, Whitlow worked with the teachers on using different Google applications and on innovative ways to bring technology into the classroom. The fellowship will continue next year and returning teachers will work on a project.
Each fellow has become a resource in their buildings for teachers who want to learn about tools available to them. All teachers in the district have access to a suite of apps from Google, since the district signed on to Google Apps for Education three years ago.
Tabb said the district has seen in an increase in the number of teachers using Google Classroom, a learning management system that allows teachers to go paperless. In the fall, he said about 4,500 teachers were using Google Classroom, and now that number is about 6,500.
“I attribute that to the fellows,” he said.
Here is a look at five ideas that either stemmed from the fellowship or spread throughout the district because of it. Teachers teamed up to do a virtual classroom between their two classes, created tools for other teachers, tried out new activities, used virtual reality to visit locations around the world and held events aimed at bringing teachers together to talk about technology.
Tools for Special Education Teacher. Allison Hahn, a special education teacher at Woodland Elementary School, teamed with two other special education teachers – Alison Langley of North Hardin High School and Nick Newton of Rineyville Elementary School – to make teachers’ lives a bit easier. The fellowship and Whitlow brought the three of them together.
To do so, they made a set of tools and templates through different Google Apps aimed at boosting efficiency and reducing paperwork.
“As special education teachers, we have a lot of paperwork and are expected to interact and be in the classrooms,” Hahn said. “We need to share this stuff. It makes life so much easier.”
Hahn said when she did the paperwork by hand, it would take her hours after work to complete behavior charts. Now she can finish all charts in 20 minutes.
“I can spend more time with kids doing things,” she said.
The three of them held a session for special education teachers during one of the district’s professional development days. Their goal was to show teachers how they’ve used the apps.
Beyond the reports that must be filed, Hahn said the Google apps have created opportunities for special education students.
Hahn has trained her students on how to use the different apps, turning them into mini Google masters, as she calls them. When they master the different apps, those students are more prepared for regular education classrooms. Sometimes, Hahn said, they know more.
“The students feel like they have ownership over something and feel more independent, like they are good at something,” she said.
Hahn plans on doing the fellowship next year and continuing her work with the mini masters.
She said there’s a continuing cycle of thinking these students can’t do something.
“I want to spread the word: They can do it,” she said.
A Virtual Trip. Kelsey Birdwhistell, a writing teacher at West Hardin Middle School, wanted to try something different for students’ writing assignments in which they would find a piece of art they connected with and write a narrative based on how they felt.
Because there’s not much funding for field trips to art museums, she had the idea of students virtually visiting a museum. Students would ideally put on virtual reality goggles and wander around an art museum.
But the idea had its limits and didn’t work very well, so Birdwhistell went back to the drawing board.
Instead, once the students had picked out their artwork, they would find a location anywhere in the world related to it. Then, using Google apps and virtual reality goggles, the students could go to that location and look around. For example, if a student chose the painting on the ceiling of the Paris Opera House, then they could go to Paris.
“It makes you feel like you are there,” Birdwhistell said.
She said students connected with virtual reality activity on a strong level.
“They loved the opportunity,” she said. “It morphed into something different than I anticipated.”
The technology aspect also enhanced the students’ final papers. She said the creativity with which they picked the piece led to more creativity in their stories.
Birdwhistell acknowledged she didn’t know what she was getting herself into with the fellowship, but now she wants to be a leader in her school when It comes to technology.
Class Partnership.Throughout this school year, two classrooms in different ends of the county were connected thanks to technology.
Brandy New, a fourth-grader teacher at Vine Grove Elementary School, teamed up with Erica Wyatt, a fourth-grade teacher at Creekside Elementary School, for a virtual class. The two classes met each other over Google Hangouts, and the students were pen pals, writing letters to one another on Google Docs.
The two teachers knew each other from their days teaching at Woodland Elementary where they would work together. New said they hope to do a lot more next year between their classes.
New said she found students wrote much better in those letters to their pen pals.
“The kids who don’t usually use capital letters or periods did,” she said.
The letters also helped to bring out a student’s writing voice.
Overall, New said the virtual partnership helped students see other children and how similar they are.
“They are still at an age where everything that happens is in their class and at home,” she said. This partnership helped to show students people outside their world.
When they met over Google Hangout, New said her students were surprised to see the same posters in Wyatt’s classroom.
New said she and Wyatt were purposeful in how they partnered students, putting children with similar interests and demeanors together.
For teachers who want to do something similar, New said the key is to find somebody who is interested. If they can’t find anyone locally, she suggested using Twitter and teacher hashtags such as #sschat or #KidsDerserveIt to find teachers.
New said the fellowship made the teachers push themselves.
“When you are around like minds and like spirits, it’s reinvigorating,” she said. “It’s nice to have that spark.”
Sharing Ideas. Alison Langely, a special education teacher at North Hardin High School, wanted to get teachers talking about technology.
“I thought there was a missing piece in the building,” Langley said.
Her solution was Appy Hour, a time for teachers to share how they are using technology and different apps in the class, Langley said. She found the idea at an education conference before the Innovate Fellowship, but through the group, it spread to other schools in the district and expanded to include Parent Appy Hour.
At first, the Appy Hours were mainly just Langley sharing what she was doing and seeing on Twitter. But now, other teachers share as well.
She has found that many teachers, no matter how long they’ve been teaching, are receptive to trying new things for students.
“It’s just showing them how to make everything more efficient,” she said.
She said the sessions have “lighted the fire” under teachers.
“If we aren’t teaching kids technology, then we aren’t preparing them for the world,” she said.
Langley said the fellowship has shifted the culture and kickstarted collaboration across schools.
“It’s broken down that barrier where we felt we didn’t need to share,” she said.
She’s doing the fellowship next year. Her project will focus on expanding Appy hour as a cultural shift in the schools. She also wants to engage the administrators.
“It’s hard to support something in your building when you don’t understand it,” she said.
Breaking out. Wyatt, a fourth-grade teacher at Creekside, had her students put their problem-solving skills to the test through BreakoutEDU boxes.
The boxes are based on escape rooms, where a group of people work together to get out of a locked room. The boxes take the opposite approach. Students work together to get into a locked box.
Wyatt said they come with different locks that teachers can attach to them. The kids use clues and other things to figure out how to get the locks off.
“With the kids, it adds an extra layer of engagement,” she said. “They are excited to try to break out of the box.”
Many schools and teachers are starting to use these breakout boxes. The fellowship had a set of boxes teachers could check out.
“We’re so focused on hard skills, but the breakout boxes foster soft skills such as conflict resolution and work ethic,” she said.
BreakoutEDU, the company that makes the boxes, has pre-created scenarios. But still, Wyatt, said the activity takes some effort to plan.
A key for her is the way students are grouped for the activity. She said teachers need to look for different strengths in their students to have a complete group.
“It forces teachers to really think about their students,” she said.
She also suggested that teachers have a fail-safe for the boxes and set clear expectations.