English Learners Put High-Tech Blackboards to New Use

Wouldn't it be great if someone did a follow-up on the results of the huge investments (see last paragraph in story below) made by local school districts in digitized whiteboards? Here's a story from 2008.

English Learners Put High-Tech Blackboards to New Use
By EMILY ALPERT
Voice of San Diego
Friday, Feb. 1, 2008

...Magic is now standard at El Toyon Elementary School in National City, where Vazquez teaches bilingual classes for first and second grade students. Here, every classroom boasts an interactive whiteboard; across the National School District, half of classrooms got the tools this year.

National, a district with a history of achieving against the odds, has adopted the technology more widely than any other school district in San Diego County. It's an unlikely Mecca for high-tech, a school where educators say most children go home to play with Nintendos, not PCs. Ninety percent of its students are from low-income households; nearly 70 percent are still learning English.

But here, the technology has yielded results, according to an early study. Test scores ticked upward in the high-tech classrooms, where 5 percent more students passed state tests compared to their less-wired counterparts. Teachers report that students are more attentive and excited, and go absent less frequently.

National City's success points to an emerging focus for the technology: Bringing second-language students up to speed. English-language learners are the core challenge for National City schools, said Superintendent Dennis Doyle, and interactive whiteboards offer new ways to coax them toward success. Eighteen teachers tested the tools districtwide last year. This year, more took on the technology, with 20 boards in use at El Toyon alone.

"It's like … the Wii," Doyle said. "Everyone wanted it. You didn't have to advertise."

Interactive whiteboards aren't new. British schools embraced the boards four years ago, pouring nearly $50 million in government funds into the technology. Proponents tout the boards as a way to keep fickle students engaged, and to cater to different learners with multi-sensory lessons. Yet researchers have been skeptical, noting that achievement hasn't surged as the boards crop up in British classrooms.

But Britain is a world away from National City, where educators say the whiteboards are ideal for English-language learners. The tool is new to National City, but the methods aren't: lots of images and lots of interaction. To explain a word in English, Vazquez can pull a picture from the web; to keep students from tuning out, she sprinkles her lessons with quick quizzes, and invites students to the board to move objects and words onscreen.

[Maura Larkins comment: all of this can be done by any good teacher with a blackboard! When I was a teacher, I had banker boxes full of pictures and appropriate worksheets that I would pull out when my students wanted to pursue and unexpected topic.]

...Interactive boards aren't a magic bullet, educators caution. Like other technologies, they depend largely on how — and if — teachers use them. Past efforts to digitize U.S. classrooms have fizzled, lacking support from teachers, who need training and technical support, said B.J. Afeman, a project specialist in the San Diego County Office of Education. After computers did little to boost scores in the 1990s, many schools are wary of placing their hopes in technology, especially with a budget crisis looming, Afeman said.

"You can't just buy a laptop and expect kids to get smarter," said Afeman, who worked closely with National City on the project. "National did it differently."

National is known for doing things differently — and well. Statewide, its math scores top all other school districts with similar percentages of low-income and English-learning students; its English scores rank fourth. In 2004, two National elementary schools were tapped as exceptionally high-performing schools by Springboard Schools, an Oakland nonprofit that analyzes school success. Its test scores regularly rank it among schools that are far wealthier, whiter and more English-savvy.

Computers are plentiful here compared to most schools in San Diego County, with nearly one computer for every three students. But the key is how computers are used in National City schools, Doyle said — not how many there are.

Teachers decide when and how to use the boards, and are key to whether the lessons flourish or flop. Learning to use the technology takes time, as does crafting special lessons. It took Vazquez six hours to assemble her half-hour class about orange juice. Now, however, she and other El Toyon teachers can always use that lesson, pulling it up year after year.

Doyle has wisely tied technology to measurable goals, instead of heralding the technology itself, said Bruce Braciszewski, executive director of the Classroom of the Future Foundation. National also pushed professional development via the whiteboards. Teachers can trade ideas, archive their charts, and discuss individual students' progress through the system.

"Teaching is no longer that job you do all by yourself," Doyle said.

...South Bay Union School District, centered in Imperial Beach, is eyeing the technology, but nervous about the price, especially as California aims budget cuts at schools.

...Chris Oram, National's technology director, estimated the systems' total cost at $500,000. Each board costs roughly $7,000 including pre-made programs and egg-shaped controllers for students, Oram said. Individual schools pay for the boards, usually out of federal and state funds allocated to help low-income students and English-language learners. Each National City school receives between $250,000 and $500,000 annually in such funds.

National elementary schools also pay for three full-time employees to troubleshoot and train teachers to use the boards — a $250,000 cost, Oram estimated...

[Maura Larkins comment: I wonder if the whiteboards turned out to be a white elephant. Dennis Doyle hasn't revealed why he suddenly resigned, but perhaps the board was unhappy about excessive spending similar to that in the story below.]

Lavish Spending at San Diego Anti-Terror Center
Colin Weatherby
Voice of San Diego
Oct. 5, 2012

An anti-terrorism center in San Diego was cited in a U.S. Senate report on Wednesday for its excessive spending, reports the U-T.

The state-operated center purchased 55 flat-screen televisions, claiming that the purchase was necessary for monitoring the news. The former director of the center was fired after spending nearly $75,000 on the purchase. The TVs were meant to be used for a training program that never happened, and were instead used to display calendars.

Throw in a few sixers, a bowl of peanuts, and a couple of Chargers posters and we might have San Diego's best new sports bar, right? OK, maybe not.

The FBI is interested in the SDUSD whiteboard saga

What if all this money had been spent on evaluating and training teachers? You don't need whiteboards to teach. Simply walking around the classroom to look at what kids are doing, or skillfully asking for oral responses, will let teachers know if students are learning the lesson. One of my favorite tricks is NOT to let the smartest kids answer right away. Instead, the teacher waits until quite a few hands are raising before calling on someone. Another technique: ask another student if the first student has answered correctly. Do this even when the first student HAS answered correctly.

Legal Questions on How Schools Chose Their Whiteboard Brand
Emily Alpert
Voice of San Diego
February 25, 2010

...In a recent interview, Grier said he might have said that Promethean boards should be installed in classrooms, but that was a meaningless verbal slip, like the Southern habit of calling every soda a Coke...



Schools' Technology Choice Draws FBI Interest
April 28, 2010
By EMILY ALPERT

The way in which the San Diego Unified School District chose a specific brand of technological tools has drawn the interest of the FBI, according to a local businessman who sued the school district over it.

Pete Spencer, president of a La Mesa company that installs computerized whiteboards, filed a lawsuit against the school district last year alleging it had inappropriately picked a specific brand of boards for its classrooms. Spencer says he was visited this month by the FBI, which is already investigating whiteboard purchases in Florida and Iowa...

San Diego Unified is undertaking a sweeping technological makeover for schools that include classroom sound systems, laptops for each child and computerized whiteboards that can pull up web pages and interactive lessons. Two Promethean resellers, Vector Resources and Logical Choice Technologies, won a $50 million contract to install Promethean whiteboards in San Diego Unified schools last summer under a $2.1 billion bond to renovate and build schools...

After Promethean was chosen, Spencer argued he was unfairly shut out of competing to install the new technology because he didn't have an existing contract to obtain and install Promethean boards. He settled with the school district and the two winning installation companies for $42,000 earlier this year.

Spencer said he was contacted earlier this month by an FBI agent who then visited his office and asked for copies of his legal documents, including the settlement agreement, letters between his attorney and San Diego Unified and the notification the school district published seeking whiteboard installers.

"She said, 'I can't tell you whether we're doing an investigation or not. But I'll take everything you've got,'" Spencer said. FBI spokesman Darrell Foxworth verified that the agent that Spencer named exists, but he could not confirm whether an investigation is taking place.

Former Superintendent Terry Grier, now leading the Houston school system, said he had not received any subpoenas or requests for information about the Promethean boards, which were selected during his tenure in San Diego. Neither has San Diego Unified, said its attorney, Mark Bresee.

Government agencies can only specify a particular brand of products in limited cases that are specified under state law, such as matching other products or coping with an emergency. Doing so can be a quicker alternative to seeking bids for pencils, flooring or other products. But the rules are specific, meant to avoid at least the appearance of favoritism for a chosen company.

The school district argued that it needed to match Promethean to other whiteboards that had already been installed in new schools. Technology chief Darryl LaGace said his staff had earlier evaluated the boards for a smaller installation and found advantages to Promethean over another brand.

But critics say that if all government agencies followed the same reasoning as San Diego Unified, they could simply block companies from competing for business. For instance, the city could equip a few libraries with a chosen product, then insist on matching all other libraries to it...


A reader sent a link to this page:

Montgomery County Councilmember Michael (Mike) Knapp on the Promethean Board purchase made by MCPS COO Larry Bowers: "At a time when we have limited resources, the school system had locked us into certain expenditures we couldn't afford..."

Gazette; Wednesday, September 9, 2009: "3,300 Promethean Boards in Montgomery County Public School buildings. Where did they come from?..."

Was conforming the secret to raising scores at Euclid Elementary?

Sam Hodgson

Carol Manivone teaches her fourth grade class about bibliographies at Euclid Elementary.

Was conforming the secret to raising scores at Euclid Elementary? Of course not. It was the collaboration. But apparently conforming is a good way to get the collaboration. It seems that weak teachers benefit from being told exactly what to do.

Small Changes Made a Big Difference at One School
March 18, 2010
Voice of San Diego
By EMILY ALPERT

...Teachers lost some freedom to decide when and what they'd teach; not everyone was pleased. But the change fit into a bigger push from Jacobson and the state monitors to get teachers on the same page, teaching the same thing at the same time. Teachers decided to keep it even after the state stopped eyeballing their scores. Bounce from one fourth grade classroom to another at Euclid on the same day and you'll see both sets of kids penning biographies of Marie Curie and Martin Luther King Jr.

"If one person is off in left field," asked second grade teacher Starla Ortiz, "how can we discuss what was successful and what wasn't?"

Conforming allowed teachers to work together: They could talk about their strategies on similar lessons instead of talking past each other. Teachers from each grade gather to look at regular, shared tests throughout the year, meeting for a whole day every six weeks and for shorter sessions more often. They analyze what kids understand and what they don't. They learn from coworkers whose kids ace the tests.

And they decide together how to re-teach the things students missed, then give students a quick, common quiz to make sure it worked. The philosophy is that two heads -- or many more -- are better than one. It also prevents gaps in learning, because everyone knows what is being taught and when. It might sound simple, but many schools lack organization -- or trust -- and fail to coordinate...

Johnson said that trust is one of the key ingredients in surprisingly successful schools: Teachers focus on getting kids to master their classes, not just finish them. They work together and share problems and successes. They back each other up -- but they don't let each other slack off. While reformers often talk about school accountability, Johnson said, they often fail to understand how school culture can be a powerful form of social accountability. Teachers don't want to let fellow teachers down.

That pressure is even more potent when they all have the same students, which now happens at Euclid. Teaching the same things at the same time also freed teachers to send children from class to class. Euclid teachers call it "deploying." Teachers temporarily divide up the students in their grade based on their abilities. Each teacher coaches a group with similar skills, allowing them to focus on their needs.

"You don't close your door. It's not like that anymore," said Carol Manivone, a fourth grade teacher. "Now they're all our kids."

And that altered how teachers teach. Euclid educators are constantly checking whether kids get it. When Ellen Leuthard poses questions to her second graders about grammar, they hold up whiteboard slates, allowing her to instantly see who understood and who didn't. Euclid may not look very different from the outside, but it actually changed what happens inside classrooms. Many schools don't...

Wasting precious education dollars on whiteboards, gimmicks and gizmos

January 27, 2010
Why I Hate Interactive Whiteboards
By Bill Ferriter

I’ll admit that there aren’t many topics I’m more passionate about than interactive whiteboards in the classroom.

Seen as the first step towards “21st century teaching and learning,” schools and districts run out and spend thousands of dollars on these gizmos, hanging them on walls and showing them off like proud hens that just laid the golden instructional egg.

I gave mine away last summer. After about a year’s worth of experimenting, I determined that it was basically useless.

Sure, my students thought it was nifty, but it didn’t make teaching my required curriculum any easier. I probably crafted two or three neat lessons with it, but there was nothing unique about those activities. I could have easily put together similar lessons using the computer stations I already have in my room and any number of free online tools...