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Innovation The Dover, Sherborn, and Dover-Sherborn Regional School Districts pursue innovative concepts and practices to most effectively and efficiently integrate technology. Innovation, by definition, results in change and upsets the existing order. Therefore, the exploration of innovative concepts is challenging within the educational culture, and implementation of innovative concepts often meets resistance. Iteration is to innovation as revision is to writing. Innovation is a process that is never quite complete. A key to successful innovation is the iteration of thought between educators and technologists. The educators bring "unarticulated requirements" to the table. The technologist brings emerging and existing technologies. Analysis blends the two. The Districts are pursuing innovative processes in the following areas: Information Management.
Administrators can now analyze student, teacher, department, school, and district performance to an astonishing degree of detail. Budgetary, personnel, health, discipline, attendance, and other data can be linked with curriculum frameworks and associated lessons, standardized test results, and teacher grade books. Algorithms are available to provide alarms for potential shortfalls in performance rather than “after the fact” remediation. School districts, focused in the past five years on creating technology infrastructure and support, and obtaining hardware, have largely been reacting to state and federal authorities’ demands when it comes to information and data. Dover-Sherborn's Technology Manager wrote a paper on this issue for presentation to the ACCEPT and TEC Collaboratives titled "Information Management: Improving Student Outcomes Through Data Driven Decision-Making." The paper is available by clicking on the Information Management link at http://www.masstechsolutions.com . This paper lays the groundwork for administrators to take the initiative and begin exploiting data at the local level as a decision-making tool to improve student outcomes, increase teacher effectiveness, improve administrative efficiency, enhance situational awareness, and increase parental involvement. Several ACCEPT Collaborative districts have adopted the recommendations contained in the paper to create a task force of district leadership to develop an understanding of data driven decision-making, conduct work process reviews, and assess information systems, organization, staffing, and job descriptions. Through the collaborative, and in conjunction with TetraData, Dover-Sherborn is conducting an assessment of its information environment. This process also requires the promotion of cultural change within the districts. Educators must become more aware of their role in the quantitative analysis and data driven decision-making processes that will improve student outcomes, faculty performance, administrative efficiency, and parental involvement. Change is stressful for anyone, but particularly for those who have experienced near complete independence of action in the past. Teachers are finding change is stressful. Below is an illustration that captures the feelings of faculty in this time.
Faculty have in the past had a "Zone of Independent Action" that was nearly all encompassing. The teacher decided the curriculum, when and how to communicate with parents, when lessons would be delivered, etc. Accountability and mandates such as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) are fast changing that model. The nature of teaching is changing and the focus of the teacher is in the delivery of lessons as depicted by the illustration below:
Collaboration. Across the school districts one finds interesting and effective things going on to improve collaboration among students, teachers, administrators, and parents through technology. Voice mail, Email, and web pages stand out as the most common examples we see across the district. Increasingly, we are moving to a new level in their employment through online homework, distribution of newsletters to parent email addresses, and other such methods. The sophistication with which we are employing technology is setting a standard in the Commonwealth. The districts now use email as the primary method of communication for a variety of purposes. All staff and faculty use email as a primary means of communication. All high school and middle school students have email accounts with the district for purposes of communication and collaboration. The districts have collected at least one and sometimes two email addresses for parents/guardians of all students. Schools issue emergency notifications, announcements, and newsletters to parents/guardians via email. The district now uses five web servers to accommodate the hundreds of sites and tens of thousands of web pages hosted by the district. In addition to the comprehensive district and school websites, most teachers now have a website of their own. Hundreds of students have web sites on an Intranet web server. The introduction of K12Planet to the districts is a further extension of collaboration (Click Here for more information about K12Planet). Digitizing Content. In the past, when a teacher left the school system they took their experience with them. A newly hired teacher began nearly from scratch to develop the content that would make up lessons. The districts are attempting to end that system by encouraging the creation of digital content. Web servers and licensing for Microsoft Front Page and Adobe Photoshop provide the tools for every teacher to digitize lessons and associated materials. High speed scanning capabilities have been purchased to allow teachers to quickly convert paper materials to digital Adobe Acrobat files. Some teachers now have nearly all of their materials and lessons digitized. In some cases, class lecture notes written or drawn on the whiteboard in class are available immediately after class online when the teacher posts them to his web site. To see a few excellent examples of this please go to:
Mr. Baroody's Web Site Imagine if these teachers were to leave the school system and a new teacher hired in their place. The organization and content of these web sites will provide a 60% answer to the incoming teacher. We intend to further expand in this area. Particularly, we are working to improve and expand the knowledge base of FrontPage users so that all teachers have a digital presence that is accessible, current, and comprehensive. We are also examining curriculum management software that can manage curriculum, store or link content, provide assessment tools, and immediate assessment and reports to faculty and administrators. Microsoft Class Server is under consideration for this function. Video streaming is a capability that the districts must examine for the future. Imagine teaching a class on John F. Kennedy, space exploration, cells, or any number of topics without including available video to students in school and from home. This technology and content is available now and the districts are examining it as a framework aligned resource. Specifically, the districts are experimenting with video streaming provided by the Discovery Channel through a subsidiary called United Streaming. Click Here to read more about this product.
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