Module 7 Assignment

The need that the use of ipads could address in my classroom has to do with differentiated instruction.  I currently teach grades 6-8 in the same classroom together, with students whose reading and math skills range  from second through eighth grade.  Creating lessons, thematic units, and providing appropriate one to one instruction and support is logistically very difficult.

Students using ipads to access resources such as the Khan Academy website would help me provide individualized instruction and practice at any level at any time that is engaging (these students also have emotional disabilities, so engagement is a must).  Using ipads would ensure access as needed, and websites such as Khan provide a number of performance tracking tools for teachers.  Also, these sites are free for the public to use.

Scholarly Articles:

Bouck, E. C., & Flanagan, S. (2009). Assistive Technology and Mathematics: What Is There and Where 

     Can We Go in Special Education. Journal Of Special Education Technology, 24(2), 17-30.

Payne, J. D. (2008). An investigation of the impact on student achievement of the mobile math initiative in 

     three high poverty schools in a single school district. Dissertation Abstracts International Section A, 

     68,

Haydon, T. (n.d). A Comparison of iPads and Worksheets on Math Skills of High School Students with 

     Emotional Disturbance. Behavioral Disorders, vol. 37, no. 4 (Aug 2012), p. 232-243

Virtual Schooling Annotated Bibliography Assignment



DiPietro, M. (2010). Virtual School Pedagogy: The Instructional Practices of K-12 Virtual School Teachers. Journal Of 
         Educational Computing Research, 42(3), 327-354.

     The author conducted an analysis of "successful" K-12 virtual educator practices, in an effort to shed more light on the teaching practices of online instructors.  The increase in popularity of online courses is described in the article, with the number of states offering online courses at this level doubling from 2007 to 2010.  The author identifies three general domains of teaching practice that can be examined within the context of online education: communication, pedagogic practices, and instructional design.  Data was collected from an private, not for profit virtual school that serviced school districts in the midwest United States.  Teachers were ranked as successful according to three criteria: experience, certification, and identification as "successful" by the administration of the agency.  Data was collected through interview processes, observation by the researcher, and sample content from the educator's actual courses.  The author recommends using a framework to guide educator practice in virtual schooling called the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge Framework.  The author feels that the adoption of a framework would help inform educators around best practice in online education.

     This article was informative to me as someone who is familiar with educator practice but unfamiliar with virtual schooling.  Two points that I found especially interesting were the authors description of how rapidly this mode of education is growing in our county, a fact I was not aware of.  Secondly, the author notes that teachers in the online school he studied had no requirements for certification, no curriculum frameworks to follow, no "set standards, qualifications, or certifications" (DiPietro, 348).  With the growth of this mode of educating students K-12, I think establishing state regulations for online education that conform to the regulations for "face to face" school teachers is important.

     The author presents an unbiased examination of educator practice in online schooling in this article.  The research sets out to identify successful educators within a program, and extract data around what makes them more successful than their peers.  To that end, the author is successful.  The article describes the growing trend of online schooling as both an opportunity and a challenge with objectivity.  This was a helpful first article to choose, as it presents both the big picture of online education as well as important details around educator practice.

Currie, N. S. (2010). Virtual Counseling for Students Enrolled in Online Educational Programs. Educational 
          Considerations, 37(2), 22-26.

     This article addresses the need to provide counseling services to students through a virtual school model.  The author notes that the practice of providing counseling through models besides "face to face" is not new, and in fact originated in the form of letter writing before counselors began using the internet in 1995.  There is limited information on the methods virtual schools are using to provide counseling services.  The author describes the limitations, considerations, and need to provide this service to students as the use of virtual education increases.

     I work with students identified with emotional disabilities, so this article was particularly thought-provoking for me.  It seems that I am often in the situation where I have multiple students that need counseling support and not enough staff to fill that need.  Although this article focuses more on providing counseling solely through virtual schooling, I started thinking that a hybrid setup would be very useful to programs like mine at the middle school level and up.  One of the main benefits of virtual schooling is flexible access for students, and the idea of more flexible access to counselors for my students is intriguing.  I would like to explore this idea more.

     The article examines a growing need, with attention paid to issues such as privacy concerns.  It is presented in an unbiased fashion, and was definitely thought-provoking.  The author's assessment that virtual schooling is a rapidly growing phenomenon in our society is in agreement with the first article I read.

Repetto, J., Cavanaugh, C., Wayer, N., & Liu, F. (2010). Virtual Schools: Improving Outcomes for Students with 
          Disabilities. Quarterly Review Of Distance Education, 11(2), 91-104.

     This article reviews the research on the effectiveness of virtual schooling on increasing graduation rates and academic performance of students with disabilities.  The authors quote the five "C's," Connect, Climate, Control, Curriculum, and Caring Community.  The authors contend that virtual schooling aligns with these ideas, and is effective at closing achievement gaps.  The authors describe specific high schools that are using virtual schooling in a hybrid method and have increased retention.   As these models become more prevalent in our school systems, the authors believe educators should use this opportunity to shape virtual education to address the "C's" and increase retention for students with disabilities.

     This article describes the opportunity I addressed in my mind-mapping assignment, that students with disabilities (particularly emotional disabilities) could greatly benefit from a hybrid or total virtual schooling approach to education.  The information provided in this article supports the idea that retention increases for students with disabilities when they are given access to online education.  The article also cites research I have read previously regarding the long term benefits for students with disabilities who graduate versus the bleak outcomes for students who drop out. 

     This article is more one-sided, and seems to be presenting an argument for educators to take an opportunity to help students with disabilities rather than simply describing a situation or gathering data.  The information given by these authors is exciting to me as a special educator, as I am often frustrated by a model of traditional education that doesn't work well for many of my students.  I would very much like to see a hybrid component built into the core classes at my school.

Litke, C. (1998). Virtual Schooling at the Middle Grades: A Case Study. Journal Of Distance Education, 13(2), 33-50.

      This article describes a virtual school program that was set up at a middle school, and uses formal interviews to assess the program's successes and challenges.  Educators, students, and parents are interviewed, and the data is discussed separately for each.  The author then gives a large number of recommendations based on the findings from the three groups.  The author argues that despite the school studied being an "excellent candidate" for a virtual school model, a number of issues arouse around its implementation.  The author worries that other schools that may be less prepared for these programs would suffer from even greater complications.  

     This study was older than the others, but it specifically dealt with middle school, which is the grade level I teach.   I was also curious about what a research project like this one would conclude in 1998.  Interestingly, the challenges the author identifies are the same challenges regarding virtual schools we talk about today:  the limited socialization, organizational and motivational issues, etc..

     This article was opinionated by design, and was written (I think) to caution educators around taking virtual schooling practices and applying them to younger populations just because they worked for older students.  The author does state that more research should be done to determine the effectiveness of these programs and to help educators implement them successfully.  

My dissertation topic unfortunately remains a bit nebulous.  I initially wanted to look at the effectiveness of special programs that are set up in public schools to support students with emotional disabilities.  I have also considered examining administration style and success of students with EBD, as well as discipline model and the effect on student's behavior.

The Local Problem:

Students identified by school districts as having an emotional disability have historically had very poor graduation rates, dropout rates, attendance, and a higher number of disciplinary referrals.  This is not only true when comparing this group of students to non-disabled peers, but is also evident when students with EBD are compared to students with other disability types.  This issue is evident at both the local (for me, MA) and national levels.  Other researchers have shown that academic deficits are prevalent when assessing this population for reading and math.  Overall, students with EBD may represent our most at-risk student population.

Gap In Practice:

Despite the data demonstrating that students identified with EBD are in such need, no formal plan of action has been formed by the state or nation, and there is no agreed-upon solution among researchers.  Districts in Massachusetts may send these students to specialized schools, paying a hefty bill, rather than attempt to service them in their public school settings.  Other districts attempt to create specialized programs "in-house," but each district commits a variable amount of resources, planning, or staff to these projects, and their results are therefore widely varied.  While there are national and state-wide movements to address students with reading disabilities, students with EBD continue to be neglected.

The Larger Educational Setting:

McLeskey, et al. in their research on inclusion practices "Are We Moving Toward Educating Students With Disabilities in Less Restrictive Settings?" (2010)  Identified that more students with EBD are being serviced in the regular education classroom.  Regardless of the cause of this trend, this movement toward school districts taking ownership of this student population is crucially important.  Students with EBD require a plan for successfull integration in public school settings.

A second study, by Wiley at al., "School Context and the Problem Behavior and Social Skills of Students with Emotional Disturbance," (2009) found that the characterization of students with EBD depended largely on the school environment.  For example, students at schools that served lower income populations demonstrated increased externalized behaviors.  The importance of this study is the message that environment matters to students with EBD.  These students are affected by the culture and atmosphere of their school environments, and this affects their behavior in significant ways.  This information should be used to help develop support plans for these students as they are increasingly included in public schools.

In their research article "Socioeconomic Context and Emotional-Behavioral Achievement Links: Concurrent and Prospective Associations Among Low- and High-Income Youth," Ansary, Luthar, and McMahon examine the difference between "affluent" youth and "economically disadvantaged" youth, where both groups were identified as emotionally disabled.  The authors found that the affluent youth were somewhat protected, in that they were less susceptible to several of the "indicators of emotional distress" that their disadvantaged counterparts were experiencing.  Similar to the previous study, these results demonstrate that the larger educational setting has a significant impact on the emotional functioning of students with emotional disabilities.


McLeskey, J., Landers, E., Williamson, P., & Hoppey, D. (2010). Are We Moving Toward Educating
     Students With Disabilities in Less Restrictive Settings? The Journal of Special Education, 46(3), 131–
     140.

Wiley, A. L., Siperstein, G. N., Forness, S. R., & Brigham, F. J. (2009). School Context and the Problem
     Behavior and Social Skills of Students with Emotional Disturbance. Journal of Child and Family Studies,
     19(4), 451–461.

Ansary, N. S., McMahon, T. J., & Luthar, S. S. (2012). Socioeconomic Context and Emotional-Behavioral
     Achievement Links: Concurrent and Prospective Associations Among Low- and High-Income Youth.
     Journal of research on adolescence : the official journal of the Society for Research on Adolescence,
     22(1), 14–30.

Potential Integration of Technology:

One of the major obstacles to reaching students with emotional disabilities in the regular education classroom is "disengagement" behaviors.  Many students with EBD will resist giving attention and effort to the most well-planned classroom lessons, which can be frustrating to teachers.  I think part of the answer here is technology.  In our society children are more connected to and by technology than ever before, and the implementation of blogging, webinars, wikis, and other cooperative learning activities using technology will be more effective at drawing their attention and keeping it.  For example, the use of Khan academy, which integrates math lessons using video instruction segments tied in to practice online, is a tool that students actually enjoy (they can earn rewards such as badges for example).  This website draws reluctant math students in with brightly colored math "webs" and independent work at their pace and level.  Constant positive affirmation keep them working long past the time a paper and pencil worksheet would have.  In the field of working with students with EBD, engagement is the priority.  From what I have seen, technology might help us get there.

Blog Entry:  Mod 2
Course Management Systems

Prior to my acceptance into Rivier's doctoral program, I had no exposure to course management systems such as Canvas.  I have to say that these systems are extremely helpful to someone like me, who struggles with organization.   I almost always have access to Canvas or Blackboard through my desktop, laptop, or even phone, so accessing the information I need to plan out assignments, receive announcements from instructors, or check my grades is easy.  This provides me with a feeling of security- I don't have to go hunting for the syllabus buried somewhere in my desk or bag (or lost) to tell me this blog entry is due tomorrow.  With a few clicks I can see the whole course plan laid out.

I would love to see more teachers use these platforms for their courses, starting as early as middle school.  This would facilitate communication with students and families.  It would end any confusion around when something was due, and help parents teach their children independence around keeping up with homework, projects, papers, and exams.  Students and families could get real time feedback around grades, and we may be able to do away with needless paperwork during progress report time.  The only problem with this idea is that there are some parents who don't have consistent access to the internet, so some allowance needs to be made to keep other lines of communication open.  However, the idea of a parent clicking on their child's Canvas courses is exciting to me.

Another positive possible outcome is that colleagues could access each other's Canvas sites and coordinate lessons, assignments, and schedules.  As a special educator, this would be an incredibly helpful tool.  I could easily access my students' progress in their mainstream classes, check to see if assignments were completed, and give my students timely feedback on their performance and a plan to improve.  Sometimes special educators are left in the dark, unintentionally, regarding their students day to day performance.  With the easy availability of course management systems, this seems completely avoidable.

The challenge to incorporating a CMS in a public school would be getting teachers to buy into them and update them regularly.  The capability of providing timely feedback is useless if teachers do not regularly attend to updating the CMS.  We have this issue now with a program called Edline, which simply displays students' grades as teachers enter them, and parents can access this one "window" with the grades listed.   It has been a challenge for two years to get all teachers updating them once a week, and we still haven't met that goal.

The first study I considered was a dissertation done in Texas on the relationship between schools and families. One of the most important recommendations the author writes about is that schools need to change their methods of reaching out to families to fit the needs of the community.  While Mr. Garza was probably speaking more about race and ethnicity, I took this to apply to technology as well.  If over 90% of our families have internet access and use it regularly, why are we still relying on outdated methods of communication (paper, occasional phone calls).

School and family relationships: Bridging the gaphttp://0-search.proquest.com.lib.rivier.edu/docview/304910108/fulltextPDF/embedded/8J2CRBGQHL9HCK9G?source=fedsrch

Ms. Becker-Klein, in this interesting study, found that school level variables were predictive over and above family level variables when predicting parental involvement in their children's education.  This may mean that instituting communication systems such as CMS could be valuable to all families, regardless of previous levels of involvement, socioeconomic status, etceteras.

Family and School Level Barriers to Family Involvement.http://0-ehis.ebscohost.com.lib.rivier.edu/ehost/detail?vid=5&sid=43e5fee2-b521-4f8e-9b98-77127cd4b28f%40sessionmgr10&hid=5&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=eric&AN=ED436291

The last study, by Farrel and Collier, looked at the preparation of teachers to engage in family-school communication, as well as its importance.  The authors found that teachers were not prepared for engaging in effective parent communication.  This made me think about the struggle in my own school to get teachers to communicate regularly, or update their edline accounts.  If you are not taught the importance of this aspect of the job, or how to do it effectively, I think communication falls down the ladder of priorities and becomes something "extra" teachers do if they have time.  Since teachers have very little extra time, those accounts become neglected and communication fails to happen regularly.

School Personnel's Perceptions of Family-School Communication: A Qualitative Studyhttp://0-ehis.ebscohost.com.lib.rivier.edu/ehost/detail?vid=5&sid=43e5fee2-b521-4f8e-9b98-77127cd4b28f%40sessionmgr10&hid=5&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=eric&AN=EJ880939

Mod 1 Bog Entry:

In every school system that I have worked in, a common goal for teachers and administrators has been the improvement of communication with parents.  In some districts technology has been utilized to better effect than others, but all systems I have experienced firsthand have identified this goal as important to the district and directly affecting the education of the children in our care.  Mrs. Eggeman, in her doctoral dissertation on the perceived effectiveness of teacher web pages for enhancing communication, found that the use of technology actually may frustrate both teachers and parents.  I found this very interesting, as this is the situation I currently find myself in. Teachers in my district are technically required to update their online class information every week, but this often does not happen, or the information provided is not enough for the parents who check for it.  Eggeman found that teachers were frustrated with the lack of guidelines around using the technology, and parents were frustrated by the lack of updates or maintenance of the pages.

It seems clear that access to technology such as blogging or webpages alone is not enough to foster communication between parents and schools.  Patrick Larkin writes in his article in Principal Leadership about blogging, that communication is the most important job of the leader in any profession.  He, along with other administrators and educators, recognize how important of a tool blogging or web design could be to open lines of communication with families.  A teacher who spends the time to post the positive accomplishments of his or her students, homework assignments, or upcoming assessment schedules, is communicating with all of her children's families, all at one time.  This type of communication is rapidly becoming more expected in our schools, and if teachers receive the time and support they need to utilize these tools, the benefits could be enormous.

The last article I read was a study of blogging by Nardi, Schiano, Gumbrecht, and Swartz, who looked at several aspects of the phenomenon of blogging.  Most interesting to me was the assessment of people's motivations.  The authors identified five major motivations for bloggers: documenting one's life, providing opinions, expressing emotion, articulating ideas, and maintaining a community.  I can relate some of these motivations back to the field of education, as teachers foster a sense of community, articulate ideas, and document the "lives" of their classrooms.  I think that motivated teachers, given opportunity and support, and armed with the tools of online blogs or webpages, can extend their learning communities outside the walls of the school, and incorporate parents and families as participants.

Links to articles:

http://0-ehis.ebscohost.com.lib.rivier.edu/ehost/detail?vid=8&sid=f1433dfa-eb3d-4236-a5f8-eb63c2cda74e%40sessionmgr4&hid=8&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=fb5fc4c2&AN=1346632724

http://0-ehis.ebscohost.com.lib.rivier.edu/ehost/detail?vid=8&sid=f1433dfa-eb3d-4236-a5f8-eb63c2cda74e%40sessionmgr4&hid=8&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=fb5fc4c2&AN=250193258

http://0-ehis.ebscohost.com.lib.rivier.edu/ehost/detail?vid=9&sid=f1433dfa-eb3d-4236-a5f8-eb63c2cda74e%40sessionmgr4&hid=8&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=f8638049&AN=237053823

This is my initial post to make sure I actually set this blog up correctly.  More to come.