Day 177 - LightSail in Burlington Classrooms - Dennis Villano - Director of Technology Integration

This post first appeared on the BPS EdTech Blog 

Students and teachers in Burlington are using a new literacy accelerator called LightSail. The system has provided excellent opportunities for teacher intervention and support resulting in student academic growth. LightSail has been used extensively at Marshall Simonds Middle School in our 1:1 iPad learning program. The application has been praised by students and teachers.

LightSail provides a platform for completing independent reading with a full class of students all at different levels. Teacher have the ability to personalize the experience for every student. Teachers are able to see exactly where students are in guided reading groups and are able to pinpoint individual breakdowns of comprehension in the moment. LightSail provides students with the ability to ask the questions they may be embarrassed to ask during class as well as the use of scaffolds built in for the various levels of students in the class.

LightSail’s digital literacy solution takes the best practices of literacy instruction and combines them into one app. The results in Burlington have been overwhelming positive. Teachers report the enhancement of literacy gains and the ability to streamline instruction while personalizing individual student experiences with ease. Teachers have reported that LightSail allows for the personalization of materials for each student, allowing them to read the best books at their level. LightSail can also adapt students’ libraries as they grow and deliver instant, actionable data to teachers by embedding in-text assessments into books. Burlington teachers are using LightSail’s instant data progress dashboards to easily personalize instruction. School leaders and reading specialists can see daily data for every student and classroom if needed.

You can learn more about LightSail on their site.

LightSail Progress Dashboard

Live Progress Results

Day 67 - Update: BPS Foundational Apps - Dennis Villano - Director of Technology Integration

This post originally appeared on the BPS EdTech Blog

Burlington Public Schools is 1:1 with iPads in grades 1-12. We also have iPads available in each kindergarten and preschool classroom. Our vision for a 1:1 learning environment has always been to create the most engaging and collaborative student centered classrooms possible. Although our focus has never been on apps, we have always encouraged the use of core BPS Foundational Apps that can help keep students build skills and meet the standards of our curriculum. One of the most successful aspects of our 1:1 learning program has been the focus on these BPS Foundational Apps which can be used across grade levels and content areas.

This list of apps has changed slightly since our first 1:1 high school classrooms began using iPads. Students and teachers have had the opportunity to help adjust the BPS Foundational Apps. One of the most notable changes was a shift from Evernote to Notability as the core note taking and organizational app for students. Many Burlington middle and high school students preferred Notability and began using it as their primary note taking app. Our team has now amended the BPS Foundational Apps to include Notability instead of Evernote.

Burlington is also a Google Apps for Education district. Students and teachers use GAFE as their primary communication and collaboration tool. Google Classroom has been introduced and is becoming a popular option for digital workflow. All BPS students will be using Google Blogger as a curation tool for their PreK-12 BPS Digital Portfolios.

Day 51 - Boom or Bust EdTech - Dennis Villano - Director of Instructional Technology

This post originally appeared on the BPS EdTech Blog

Schools must stop boom or bust technology purchasing. Districts have to commit to sustainability planning with budgets and purchasing or technology initiatives will feel like a first-place team that wins the World Series one year followed by finishing in last place the next year. Sound familiar Boston fans?

Red Sox General Manager Ben Cherington recently talked about boom and bust mentality, a fairly common economic terminology, in an interview with local sports reporter Sean McAdam. Cherington talked about how major league teams often have a habit of spending incredible amounts of money on free agents by buying everything in sight to go for winning season without a long-term plan for payroll sustainability in place. This can lead to a great season followed by a terrible season. Schools fall into the same trap far too often. Poor planning causes schools to face the same frustrating cycle over and over again.

Our Burlington team is almost always asked first about what devices to buy in conversations with school administrators and technology leaders.

Why did you go with iPads for your 1:1 program? Why not Chromebooks? 

Whether it’s polite or not – I’m really not sure – we usually answer by asking questions of our own about their infrastructure and sustainability plans.

How is your wifi? What are you going to do in two years when your devices are out of date? What is your network sustainability plan for three to five years from now?

These questions are almost always followed by blank faces and silence. This is a problem. We can’t have the lack of understanding and planning when it comes to a discussion about sustainability. Too much is at stake.

Burlington Superintendent Eric Conti has often expressed how districts should look at technology budgets and purchasing as being just another utility. You can certainly never tell anyone that we could not have indoor plumbing or heat during the winter months – just like we can’t say that our iPads aren’t working today or you can’t use the internet this week.

Schools must spend more time planning on device refresh cycles and infrastructure upgrades. They must also seek the sustainable funding for the human support of technology initiatives. Sustainability is not just for network and devices. We must plan for the costs associated with hiring and retaining talented educators, technology integrators, administrators, and IT professionals.

School technology programs succeed or fail for many different reasons but often the reason that is most overlooked is the long term planning for infrastructure growth and purchasing of new devices. For schools to succeed with the integration of technology they must stop creating the boom associated with buying lots of new stuff followed by the bust of later running a network that can’t handle applications and owning devices that no longer work. The inspiration and excitement created by new technology resources can quickly become frustration due to lack of long term planning. Boom or bust technology budgeting is a truly sustainable way to cause a technology program to fail.