We believe our program has been successful
because of one-on-one coaching,
integration, and real-world application.
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We live in South Dakota, USA, where extremes are the norm. Our temperatures
swing from - 40 degrees Fahrenheit
in the winter to 105 in the summer.
We have hills and beautiful rock formations on one side of the state and
vast prairies across the other.
Schools in South Dakota are no
di;erent. We have urban districts
with 20,000 students and rural
districts with less than 200. Some
schools have gone one-to-one, and
other schools have one computer
cart for two grade levels. Some teachers refuse to use their computers for
anything but email, and others are
incorporating web 2.0 tools into their
project-based learning curricula. But
one thing that is consistent across
the board is the need for technology-related professional development that
is aligned with and embedded in the
curriculum.
The Basic Program
From 2007 through 2011, we had
the opportunity to work with many
excellent teachers through a Title
IID grant-funded professional development program called Success
;rough Assessment and Technology
in the 21st Century, also known as
STAT21 and Project Integrate. Each
year, a cohort of 40 teachers participated in our yearlong course focused
on assessment and best-practice technology integration.
We began each cohort with a
kicko; meeting, where we gave overviews on topics such as digital age
skills and formative assessment and
outlined what they would be doing
and learning over the course of the
year. ;ey would:
• Analyze data
• Choose a content standard based
on data analysis
• Perform a pretest on the chosen
content standard
• Meet with a cognitive coach and
technology integration specialist
three times throughout the year
• Participate in classes focusing on assessment and technology integration
• Integrate technology into two lesson
plans for the chosen content standard
• Perform a posttest on the selected
content standard
• Capture all of this information
in an e-portfolio
son, teachers present the new material
and use formative assessment to mea-
sure student understanding and inform
teaching. If students understand the
material, the teacher moves forward as
planned. If they don’t, she tweaks the
next lesson to reteach and review.
Our process is actually quite simple.
Each teacher uses baseline data to identify a standard that is frequently unmet
in his/her classroom and then creates
two lesson plans infused with digital
age skills and tools to increase engagement in that area. During the ;rst les-
Success Stories
“It was either: Learn how to do this
or retire,” said Adlena Ecklein, a third
grade teacher in a small rural school.
She was only half-joking. She had
been teaching the same way for 40
years, but she recognized the need
to learn new tools to engage her
digital age learners.
