New school year, new technology

Carbon County School District No. 2 (CCSD#2) has a series of new initiatives including a learning management system, curriculum changes, a re-adoption of financial assistance for students competing in national competitions and several new technological advances.

Schoology

Schoology, the learning management system, will be used district-wide once implemented fully. According to former Saratoga Middle/High School Principal Larry Uhling, now District Curriculum Director and Facility Manager, when CCSD#2 was selecting a new learning management system, they had several different features in mind. The teachers needed a place to store their lesson plans, build assignments and have assignments and assessments scored. Once information is entered, according to Uhling, the data is automatically uploaded to PowerSchool, the student information system for the state.

“It does more than a lot of other learning management systems,” Uhling said. “But the biggest thing is it relates to PowerSchool, our [student information system], seamlessly. We don’t have to create another program or buy something else to have it update one to the other.”

“It’s a major tool to communicate with parents and communicate with students in an electronic environment instead of just emails,” Uhling says of Schoology.

With Schoology, parents are able to see if their child is doing their homework and track their academic progress, as well as see exactly what the homework is. Students will have the ability to start homework online and pick it up anywhere that has internet access, according to Uhling. Uhling said that in the past parents would, at times, be unaware of their child’s assignments and would doubt when the student said there was no homework assigned.

“Teachers can communicate with students through this system so they can write a note saying ‘we needed more elaboration on this paragraph’ on an English paper or something,” said Jim Copeland, CCSD#2 Superintendent. “Then the parents can also have access to that. So, if the student is supposed to come home and redo a paper or correct something more that the teacher’s asking, the parent will have the ability to just check and see if there is communication on there. So, it’s going to be a real powerful communication tool for staff, students, administration and parents.”

According to Copeland, the numerous features of Schoology will likely take the school year for staff to fully understand. Both Uhling and Copeland stressed that there would be a strong learning curve for staff.

Uhling said that much like Facebook, Google+ or other social media, Schoology allows users to create groups for different classes or projects, as well as different staff groups.

With this new software, Uhling says that CCSD#2 is implementing a system that mimics the highly collaborative, technological systems that exist at universities through an online management system called Blackboard. “That’s kind of the process we’re looking at doing, and that’s what the Schoology software allows us to do. It provides a lot of the same type of tools that Blackboard does,” Uhling said. Blackboard enables students to view syllabi and assignments, check grades and participate in class discussions.

According to Uhling, CCSD#2 students may use Blackboard to participate in an online class based out of any school, but Schoology may be able to replace it.

KAB Financial

Assistance

CCSD#2 is re-adopting the policy KAB for financial assistance with revisions. “The new policy basically states that students who place first at state competitions … then they can apply for assistance to go to the national competition wherever that may be,” Copeland said. “And then we also will provide some assistance for a sponsor to travel with them.”

According to Copeland, the policy used to be such that any student qualifying for a national academic competition would be able to apply for financial assistance. “I think there’s two reasons why that was pared a little bit. One is we’re still trying to be mindful of budget and money, but also different groups have different numbers of students that qualify. So, whereas you might go to [Future Business Leaders of America]—and I think they have the top four qualify—you might go to some other group and they only have the top two qualify.”

“The thing is, it doesn’t limit those kids from going to that contest at the national level, it’s just that it’s not going to get funded from general funds,” Uhling added. “It’s going to be their organization that fundraises … but that first place student and the sponsor will get some benefit from the KAB funds.”

“Three or four years ago when there was a budget crunch that was just one of the cuts that was made,” Copeland said. “So now, since we’re not … in the same tight funding situation, we want to start supporting that to some level again.”

The CCSD#2 Board of Trustees will be able to decide the cap for funding year to year based on the number of students that qualify and the cost of the trip up to $1,000, Copeland said. Uhling recalled that funding per student in the past was usually between $600 - $1000.

Curriculum Changes, New Options

When Copeland took the position of Superintedent of schools one year ago, he noticed that the K-5 math program was outdated.

A committee of teachers and administrators from each elementary school in CCSD#2 set out to select a new curriculum based on rigorous standards, Copeland said. The committee chose a Houghton-Mifflin program called “Math In Focus: Singapore Math,” Copeland said. According to Copeland, the majority of inservice time for elementary teachers, beginning on Aug. 17, will be spent training with the new curriculum materials.

“There are a lot of online resources, as with all of the new publishers’ products these days,” Copeland said. “So, we’re hoping to integrate a lot of the online resources through our SmartBoards (interactive whiteboards) and so on in addition to printed materials.” Representatives from CCSD#2 have visited and contacted other districts where this curriculum has been implemented, including Gillette and Cheyenne, Copeland said. “It came very highly recommended, good results,” according to Copeland, who continued to say that a similar process would be implemented for elementary reading in the coming years.

In addition to the new K-5 math curriculum, Copeland said the multi-year process of curriculum mapping is drawing to a close. According to Uhling, the curriculum mapping is the standards that the teachers have to follow throughout the district.

“We did a lot of work last year and Larry [Uhling] is going to get all that finished,” Copeland said, making an example of ninth grade English. “It basically just says what they’re doing the first quarter, the second quarter, kind of lists the standards and concepts that are being covered and stuff like that, and we’re going to post those on the district websites so that, if I’m the parent of a ninth grader, I can go on and look at them, see what they’re studying for all the subjects they’re taking.”

“It’ll be easily accessible by teachers,” Uhling added. “A new teacher coming in would be able to visit the website, pull up the curriculum and see what they’re going to be able to cover that year, and also whatever texts we’ve adopted, whatever materials we’ve adopted, that align with that curriculum.”

Seniors will be able to enroll in some college classes to gain credits that will transfer to a university. “We’re working with Western Wyoming [Community College] and providing our seniors with the option of getting 12th grade English credit plus composition credit in college. They can take COMP 110 and 120 in their senior year,” Uhling said.

“It will eventually be district wide,” Uhling continued. “We started on it last spring but we ran into just a little bit of complication with [Western Wyoming Community College] on which classes we can actually do over the internet.” Uhling hopes that by next year, seniors will be able to get their first college math credits.

Uhling explained that this program will help ease the transition into college classes by providing accountability and support with a higher level of students passing the class.

Technology

Starting in Saratoga schools, the district is adopting a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). “This will allow us not to spend as much money on new computers all the time,” Copeland said, explaining that the VDI works in such a way that one would be able to log into the system on their computer at home and access all the programs on the computers in the school network.

“Eventually we’re hopeful that—say if a student was taking a business class, and has certain software available that they need to do their assignments, right now they have to come to school to that lab to have access to the software programs,” Copeland explained. “When this is fully implemented, and it will probably take a year or two, to be honest, then they can go home—and it’s web based, remote … Basically, you log on, it knows which things you need access to as a student, so it’s tailored to you.” Uhling added that students would be able to use their iPad or phone as well.

For now, according to Copeland, students will immediately be able to use the VDI on different computers throughout the school. For example, if a student is working on something in the library, they will be able to access their work in the computer lab.

CCSD#2 is also switching to a new domain this year, according to Copeland, such that emails will eventually be at the domain crb2.org. This will give everyone a Google email and allow all staff and students to access and utilize Google Docs and other Google web-based software.

“It’ll all be tied into the system, so the crb2 account will … have certain safeguards then so the kids will be protected,” Uhling added. “So any discussions, or anything they do on that crb2 [account], will be monitored. And that’s another thing that Schoology does. It does a really nice job of monitoring content so if we put something on there as a webpage for [the students] to go look at, it’s monitored by Schoology as well as our educators.”

Uhling says that the sixth grade students will now have iPads like grades 7-12. “Several of our textbooks are actually on the iPad,” Copeland said.