Strode Station Elementary
Clark Country School District
Winchester, Kentucky

Clark County Seamlessly Integrates Instructional and Assistive Technologies

Strode Station Elementary, located in Clark County, Kentucky, is a remarkable school. Launched in 1993, with a major commitment to diversity and accessibility, it serves 596 students, including 210 students with disabilities.

Strode Station is a Title 1 school with 44 teachers, 24 instructional assistants (19 of whom support students with special needs), and access to an additional team of special education resources in a wide range of areas. Built on a single level, with all spaces accessible, the building features visual alarms for students with hearing impairments, wheelchair-accessible playground equipment, switch-controlled doorways, and much more.

A forward-thinking, district-wide Assistive Technology group, led by Dr. Jennifer Bell – formerly on the faculty at the University of Kentucky – ensures that the students at Strode Station Elementary School also have accessible computer technology to support their learning. As principal Cynthia Powell puts it, the school is "committed to the design of UDL classrooms and technology to help provide for students' individual learning needs."

Equally important to the administrators and teachers in Clark County is the seamless integration of Assistive and Instructional technologies. Just as the special educators at Strode team up with general education teachers to co-lead classes, the IT and AT experts in Clark County work closely together – under the auspices of a single department – to meet the varied needs of students and staff in the district.

THREE-YEAR UDL GRANT

Clark County's AT-IT team, which has a history of research projects, recently applied for a three-year Universal Design for Learning (UDL) grant from the state of Kentucky. The competitive grant was awarded to three Kentucky schools – with Strode Station chosen as the elementary school model for the state. Led by Jennifer Bell and first grade teacher Amy Shoemaker, the program's goal is to "develop a working model to implement …UDL concepts across all classes in order to increase student access to the general curriculum, and to improve the academic performance of all students in general and special education."

One key element of the grant project is the use of IntelliTools Classroom Suite and IntelliKeys as critical UDL technology platforms. As Bell puts it, "I don’t know of any other piece of software that does everything that IntelliTools Classroom Suite does. It works well with a whole range of students, from pre-reading kindergarteners to gifted fifth graders." Clark County is working closely with the IntelliTools Professional Development team to support participating teachers and assess the impact of the project.

The partnership with IntelliTools was designed to help Strode Station Elementary School meet a number of its project goals. In particular, an 8-week pilot study was set up to examine the use of IntelliTools Classroom Suite to support the following:

1. Improved student writing skills in two areas of need determined by the project team: on demand writing and open response writing.
2. An increase in the effective use of technology by teachers and students.

IMPLEMENTING THE PROJECT

The IntelliTools pilot involved 15 teachers – both general and special educators – in K-5 classrooms, as well as one parent and six district-level IT and AT specialists. Clark County AT specialist Beth Blankenship worked with Jennifer Bell to coordinate the project. All students in the participating classes were targeted, not just those with special needs, and the classroom activities were to be embedded within the daily curriculum and based on Kentucky state standards (CATS).

The project began with on-site training by IntelliTools' national consultant, Rick McAtee, who continued to work closely with the Strode Station teachers throughout the eight weeks. In the opening sessions, McAtee introduced the features of IntelliTools Classroom Suite and modeled its use as a teaching tool. He followed up with weekly lesson plans, sent via e-mail to the teachers, who had all agreed to spend one hour a week incorporating IntelliTools Classroom Suite into the curriculum.

Participating teachers gathered writing samples from students at the beginning, middle, and end of the pilot to evaluate progress. In addition, McAtee and IntelliTools' director of professional development, Caroline Van Howe, visited the school twice during the eight weeks to observe, answer questions, and offer suggestions.

Jennifer Bell believes that the give-and-take that occurred during the sessions with IntelliTools was particularly valuable to the teachers. In addition to modeling an intuitive approach to learning the software, McAtee helped teachers see how to modify the tools for their own classroom needs. For example, after showing the teachers how to use a creative writing template included with IntelliTools Classroom Suite, he helped them generate ideas for applying this template to the social studies curriculum. On their next visit, McAtee and Van Howe were treated to a one-hour demonstration of a westward expansion lesson that had been created using the template and successfully implemented by the fifth grade teachers.

In another example, McAtee worked with students in one of the classrooms while teachers observed. Using IntelliTools Classroom Suite and an interactive white board, he invited students to come up to the front of the class and move characters on the screen to create an animated movie story. This exercise was repeated with a number of variations so that the students got the chance to explore the steps involved in developing a story, while playing the role of "director," "actor," or "animator." In the weeks that followed this demonstration, the Strode teachers used a similar approach to develop a variety of different stories with their students. These ranged from a first grade lesson by Amy Shoemaker, in which her students talked, wrote, and sang about zoo animals, to a project by fifth graders in Amanda Prewitt and Gretchen Banks' classroom, who wrote “What it takes to be a great fifth grader” letters to students in the fourth grade.

THE BENEFITS

The results of the IntelliTools project were measured in a number of ways. The three off-computer writing samples were supplemented by other student work, collected into portfolios using IntelliTools' portfolio option. Anecdotal reports from the teachers helped round out the picture. In addition, Jennifer Bell and other administrators spent time observing the participating classrooms. Here is an overview of what was found:

Improved Writing
All assessment measures pointed to a significant improvement in student writing skills. By the end of the eight weeks, teachers reported – and had student work to demonstrate – that their students had a better understanding of sentence components; were more likely to write in complete, complex sentences; were better at story sequencing; and were more able to visualize a story and use details to create fuller, more interesting results.

Increased Student Engagement
First grade teacher Amy Shoemaker remarked on the ways in which her students, many of whom had IEPs and started the year as reluctant writers, blossomed when given the chance to work with IntelliTools Classroom Suite. "One student in particular would not even attempt to write a sentence by himself. After using the program for a couple of weeks, he would write his own sentences with great detail. When he would bring me his paper, he would be so excited, he wanted to read it to the class." She describes another student who had never participated in whole group discussions: "After using the IntelliTools software, he wanted to be the first one to take a turn and tell us more about why he made the animal do that particular motion."

This enthusiasm carried across the grade levels, with teachers and observers remarking on how excited students were to be telling and hearing stories with help from the computer. Like Shoemaker, many of the teachers found that their students' time on task improved significantly and that their enhanced ability to concentrate and focus on the lesson was evident in their writing samples. Teacher Sherry Browning describes her students' reactions to taking science notes using IntelliTools Classroom Suite: “Students were helping one another and were eager to do more. They experienced a real attitude shift and went from asking do we 'have to' do this to asking when do we 'get to' do more writing in science. "

Application to Other Subject Areas
While the project started with a focus on writing, teachers quickly found that IntelliTools Classroom Suite fit well into a number of other subject areas. Jennifer Bell describes the use of an IntelliTools ocean template as an example: "The ocean scene tied in with science, of course, but the students were also working on math concepts such as proportion and scale. In addition, it led to follow-up lessons on social studies concepts such as migrations of all sorts and the dangers faced by animals and people as they migrate."

Collaboration
The Strode teachers, already used to a collaborative environment involving team teaching, found that the project activities further strengthened team building. Ideas were exchanged frequently between participants in the program and a number of teachers naturally took on leadership roles, modeling new lessons and ideas for others to consider. The use of IntelliTools Classroom Suite with an interactive whiteboard encouraged student collaboration as well, with students working effectively together on whole-class interactive experiences.

Student Leadership
Many of the older students who participated in the IntelliTools project ended up taking on leadership roles when working with the technology. A group of sixth graders filmed some of the model lessons, creating a video archive that can be viewed by future teachers joining the program. Students involved in the School Technology Leadership Program (STLP) helped install software last year, and did so well at supporting faculty that the project leaders hope to get them involved in designing and customizing future IntelliTools Classroom Suite lessons based on requests from teachers.

Teacher Comfort with UDL Technology
IntelliTools Classroom Suite is helping Strode Station Elementary School meet its overall UDL goals. According to Jennifer Bell, participating teachers learned how easy it was to use accessible multimedia in the classroom. "The teachers who were reticent are now more open and enthusiastic. Fourth and fifth grade teachers who weren't involved last year were pretty vocal about joining the project this year. And teachers who did participate increased their technology skills in a number of different ways."

A Replicable Model for Professional Development
In describing the partnership with IntelliTools, Bell points out that, "Not only did we learn about this incredible tool, we also learned new methods to provide training. This will change the way we approach [professional development] for all of our staff from now on." Three key components contributed to the project's success in this area:

• Modeling and Observation:
  According to Beth Blankenship, “It was so powerful watching the IntelliTools staff model lessons with our students." Seeing Rick McAtee in action with a class "really jumpstarted the teachers’ creativity and helped them realize all the different ways ICS could be used with whole group instruction." In addition, the project's leadership team created many opportunities for the teachers to demonstrate their own IntelliTools Classroom Suite lessons – to one another and to the IntelliTools staff – and get feedback on the spot.
• An Inquiry-Based Approach:
  Jennifer Bell was impressed with the way McAtee, in introducing the software, avoided getting bogged down in step-by-step "first do this and then do that" instructions. "He didn't tell them what to do; he asked 'How do you think you would do this?'" she explains. "This inquiry-based approach encouraged teachers to explore and figure things out, leading to feelings of confidence and independence far more quickly than taking them through the software step by step."
• Job-Embedded Learning:
  Another important element of the project, according to Bell, was having access to training during the school day, rather than at the end of the day when teachers are tired and the classroom context is missing. The fact that project activities built gradually over several weeks, reinforcing the learning that had come before, also added to the teachers' comfort level. "It helped that they were applying what they learned to the curriculum and that they knew they were accountable and would be asked to tell others about what they were doing," says Bell.

With the success of the eight-week pilot, plans are under way to expand the use of IntelliTools Classroom Suite to the entire school and to start a new implementation in a second Clark County elementary school. IntelliTools staff members will once again be helping out, as will the seasoned teachers from last year's project.

"We had carved out ambitious goals for the UDL team with IntelliTools Classroom Suite," concludes Jennifer Bell, "and although it is still in the early phase of implementation, we believe we have met and in some cases exceeded our goals. We are particularly pleased with how teachers who admitted feeling overwhelmed in the beginning ended up seeing real benefits of using the technology in the classroom with their students."