As of the 2010-2011 school year, Council served 601 students. The average student-teacher ratio was 18:1. All of the school's educators have met the state's Highly Qualified (HQ) status as determined by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001. The schools in our school system, Mobile County Public Schools (MCPS), received funding from both state and local sources, and our school was allocated a total expenditure of $9,326.00 per student. Council was delegated a Title I school and received federal funding due to the fact that 52% of students qualified for free- or reduced-cost meals. The gender make-up of students during 2010-2011 included 53% females and 47% males, and the ethnic make-up included 53% African Americans, 44% Caucasians, 2% Asian Americans or Pacific Islanders, and 1% other or unknown ethnicities (Council Traditional School:, 2010, pp. 1-6).
Another component of NCLB is Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP. According to the Alabama State Department of Education (ALSDE) accountability report (2010), Council met the AYP criteria every year since the inception of the accountability measure. The school also boasts standardized test scores significantly higher than both MCPS and State of Alabama testing averages. In 2010, 98% of third grade students met or exceeded the state's reading standards on the Alabama Reading and Math Test (ARMT), and 89% of those same students met or exceeded the same test's math standards. In fourth grade, 99% of students met or exceeded the state reading standards, and 97% met or exceeded the math standards. One hundred percent of fifth- grade students met or exceeded the standards in both reading and math.
I have been a member of Council's faculty since the beginning of the 2006-2007 school year, and throughout the course of my employment there, I have been a fifth-grade teacher. Upon my arrival to the school, because of my interest in technology and because of the wealth of technology available, but relatively unused, I began a heavy infusion of technology in my classroom, which I now recognize would be considered not just a technology-infused classroom, but a full-blown blended e-learning environment. My foray into e-learning began in August 2006, with the utilization of a website called Quia, which is short for Quintessential Instructional Archive ("Quia Web: About," 2011). During the course of that year, I discontinued use of traditional paper-and-pencil tests and worksheets in favor of online testing and independent practice activities through Quia.com. The site offers a variety of instructor tools including 16 different templates for teachers to create student practice activities based on their own curriculum content; an online testing system which provides automatic grading, immediate feedback to students and detailed feedback options for teachers, and a multitude of data reports; and a class Web page creator with which teachers can post announcements to keep students and parents informed. Furthermore, the site allows users to browse activities and quizzes other users have created in more than 300 different categories ("Quia Web: About," 2011). According to the Quia website, the following minimum hardware and software requirements are essential to maximize the site's potential, and our school meets all of the requirements: 1) a computer with a minimum of 128MB of RAM available; 2) a monitor that will allow viewing of a 800 x 600 pixel image (optimally, a display with a minimum of 1024 x 768 resolution and 32-bit color); 3) for audio optional audio recordings, the ability to play and record sounds via speakers or headphones and a microphone; 4) an Internet connection through a proxy device that will obey the HTTP/1.1 protocol, including caching and anti-caching directives, with a recommended minimum connection speed of 56Kbps; 5) one of the following operating systems: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Macintosh OS X; 6) one of the following browsers: Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8, or 9; Mozilla Firefox 2, 3, 3.5, or 4.0; Google Chrome; or Safari 3, 4, or 5; 6) Java applet technology and Flash player; and 7) Windows Media Player or QuickTime in order to play audio recordings ("Quia Web: System," 2011). The site offers technical support via an extensive Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page and personalized help through email. In my experience, when faced with an issue that could not be resolved through the FAQ page, my emailed request was answered on the same or next business day. While the site offers a free 30-day trial, the standard yearly membership is $50.00 per teacher ("Quia Web: About," 2011).
Later that year, due to my students' enthusiasm for the technology we were using in the classroom, I began a quest to find a site that would provide free, filtered email for students. After logging on to my computer, I typed "student email provider" into my Google search engine, and the first site recommended was Gaggle.net. I investigated the site and found it was exactly what I was looking for, and in fact, it offered way more than I was looking for. The site offered safe, online tools that at that time included protected and filtered email, message boards, chat rooms, digital lockers, profile pages, and calendars for students ("Gaggle Applications," 2011). Best of all, it was completely free. The site has since expanded to include protected and filtered student blogs, homework drop boxes, a social wall, GaggleTube (screened and safe YouTube videos), Zoho Docs (online document and spreadsheet management), widgets, parent email accounts, and filtered SMS texting ("Gaggle Applications," 2011). The site is completely safe because of Gaggle.net's compliance with all United States privacy and safety laws, especially those aimed at protecting children, such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), and the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA). In addition to their compliance with federal privacy and safety laws, Gaggle.net also features student filtering of text in emails, message boards, chat rooms, texts, and blogs to block content that includes inappropriate language (profanity, drug references, sexual references, and potential threats to student safety). The site also features an anti-pornography scanner to analyze the content of digital images posted on the site or attachments added to emails. Furthermore, the site blocks specific domains and addresses known to be inappropriate for students (pornographic sites, social networking sites, etc.). Teachers and administrators can also customize the filtering system by adding words and/or phrases to the blocked word lists or the blocked domain or web address lists. As a failsafe, Gaggle further offers a Human Monitoring Service (HMS) to all subscribers by assigning a Gaggle employee to each school to handle monitoring of all accounts ("Gaggle Safety," 2011). With the expansion of the site to include so many more services, they no longer offer free accounts to teachers or schools. The current cost is $6.00 per student, per year, or $3.75 per student per year with a district-wide purchase ("Gaggle: Frequently Asked," 2011). Minimum hardware requirements, for optimal performance, include: 1) Windows XP or Macintosh OS X (or later versions); 2) Gaggle browser requirements are either Internet Explorer 7 and higher or Mozilla Firefox 3.5 and higher; and 3) current Java and Flash plug-ins. Of course, because Gaggle is a web-based service, facilities with limited bandwidth or speed will likely encounter performance issues ("Gaggle: Technical/Network Administrators," 2011). As was the case with Quia.com, our school's hardware and software profiles meet the requirements for optimal Gaggle.net performance.
Through the use of Gaggle.net, my students were able to participate in both synchronous (via real-time chat sessions, live teaching, viewing of uploaded PowerPoint presentations in class) and asynchronous (email, message boards, profile pages, blogs, digital lockers) e-learning applications.
During the 2008-2009 school year, my partner teacher (who teaches the same curriculum on the same time frame as I teach) joined me in using Quia.com and Gaggle.net for her students. With the addition of another classroom, our students were able to begin collaborating between classes to accomplish the same or similar tasks with the synchronous and asynchronous experiences.
Because of the age of students my school serves (K-5), I believe the type of e-learning experience best-suited for the learners involved would be a hybrid, or blended, experience. A blended experience, also called web-enhanced learning, would combine a mix of web-based learning and traditional, face-to-face learning (Mortera-Gutierrez, 2006). According to Barbour and Plough (2009), when students attend online-only virtual classes, there are social implications that need to be addressed as students are essentially isolated from other students and their instructors. "Overcoming this perceived sense of social isolation for full-time online learning programs is a major challenge that many cyber charter schools struggle with" (Barbour & Plough, 2009, p. 56). The social isolation concerns can be eliminated by offering a blended e-learning experience to young students. Citing Keegan (1996) and Wedemeyer (1981), Cavanaugh, Gillan, Kromrey, Hess, and Blomeyer suggest that the most important traits that set online learners apart from their traditional-setting peers is their autonomy and a greater sense of individual responsibility (2004). One might argue that in elementary-aged students, they haven't had the educational experiences or maturity to fully develop those characteristics.
Broadbent (2002) outlines four different types of e-learning: informal, self-paced, leader-led, and performance support tools. I believe, even at the young age of our learners, a balance of the four types would be appropriate at my school. In informal learning, students would essentially gather information online without any formal instruction. A self-paced experience would allow students to access self-selected, Web-based instructional materials on their own time and at their own pace. Leader-led experiences would allow learners, under a teacher's or facilitator's direction, to participate in synchronous (real-time) and asynchronous (delayed) activities. Finally, through performance support tools, students might learn new software or applications through video tutorials, webinars, or software wizards.
In determining an organization's readiness to incorporate e-learning, Broadbent (2002) suggests the collection of seven types of data: 1) context data to assess the organization's needs or reasons for implementing e-learning; 2) technology data to determine if the in-house technology can sustain e-learning; 3) user data to collect information about potential learners and instructors; 4) work data to gain insight on the task requirements; 5) content data to review and analyze procedural, legal, and curricular regulations; 6) training suitability data to determine the professional development needs of participants and instructors; and 7) cost/benefit data to determine the return on investment on any suggested training.
Contextually, reasons for implementing e-learning within our school can be sourced to the National Educational Technology Plan developed by the United States Department of Education in 1996. Under the plan, five technology goals are outlined for schools to adopt. The five goals are as follows: 1) all students and teachers will have access to information technology in their classrooms, schools, communities, and homes; 2) all teachers will use technology effectively to help students achieve high academic standards; 3) all students will have technology and information literacy skills; 4) research and evaluation will improve the next generation of technology applications for teaching and learning; and 5) digital content and networked applications will transform teaching and learning (U. S. State Department of Education, 2004).
Our organization's adoption of e-learning would accomplish all five of the aforementioned goals. In addition, our school system has a technology plan developed to accomplish the school system's vision statement: "Through the effective integration of technology, all stakeholders of the Mobile County Public School System will be equipped to meet the challenges of the 21st century" (Mobile County Public School System, 2010). Our school is well-equipped with technology to support an e-learning program. Each classroom teacher in grades two through four have a minimum of seven desktop or laptop computers in their classrooms, fifth-grade teachers have a minimum of 11 desktop or laptop computers in their classrooms, and teachers in kindergarten and first grades have a minimum of five desktop or laptop computers in their classrooms. In addition, we have a full-functioning lab with 25 wired workstations. Furthermore, all classroom teachers in grades kindergarten through fifth have wall-mounted interactive white boards with ceiling-mounted LCD projectors. Our school system maintains our network, and through the use of several access points throughout our campus, we are 100% wireless with appropriate firewalls and content filters. Through the school system website, we have access to streaming media via the Internet, and we also have online access to the school library through the Athena software program. In addition, the school system maintains its own website and intranet that provides all teachers access to attendance and grade book software, and parents, through the use of a student username and password, can access attendance and grade records at any time, day or night.
I believe the data I have collected over the past five years of my e-learning experiences, coupled with the experiences of my partner teacher over the last three years could serve as an e-learning pilot of sorts. To expand the e-learning experiences to other fifth-grade classes and to lower grades, I would recommend my school devise an instrument to survey the readiness of not only the students, but of the teachers, and of the parents. In my experiences, I found the parents to be considerably more reluctant of the online learning experiences than their children, predominantly because I believe it reflected changes that they, themselves, were not equipped to deal with. Parents were typically surprised and impressed, however, with their children's technological prowess when it came to e-learning and the sharing of their classroom experiences. Because of the user-friendly interfaces of both Quia.com and Gaggle.net, and because of most of my students' prior technological experiences, the transition from traditional assessments and methods of communication to web-enhanced assessments and communication was relatively seamless. One issue, that our school would need to address if adopting e-learning across an entire grade level or multiple grade levels, is the lack of technological access for some students. In my first year of blended e-learning, I had six students without reliable access to Internet or a computer from their home. In both my second and third year, there were four students without reliable access. In my fourth year, the number of students without access to necessary technology dropped to only two students, and this past year, my fifth year of implementation, all of my students had access to home computers with reliable Internet access. For my students who were without access to technology, I allowed early access to the classroom in the mornings and late access after school to complete online assignments. I also allowed in-class time, and I frequently made modifications to shorten assignments to enable them sufficient time to reach learning objectives. In addition, I held conferences early in the school with the parents of students without access to technology to suggest utilizing the public library computers or perhaps the computers of friends and/or relatives. I always found parents to be very receptive to my suggestions, and most parents went out of their way to ensure their children found necessary access to needed technology. So, for the most part, our school population is one that values the necessity of home technology, which makes our school a prime candidate to implement e-learning. I would, however, make the recommendation that the school secure funding (via grants, Title I funds, PTA funds, or fundraising) to purchase laptop computers for students without available technology to check out during the school year and perhaps secure funding through corporate sponsorship to provide a year's worth of Internet service for those families who demonstrate financial need.
Again, because of the user-friendly interfaces of the already-proven programs I am using, teacher training would be minimal, and could be handled on campus using the training devices (tutorials, webinars, and videos) produced by both Quia.com and Gaggle.net. Furthermore, I would extend the training to parents in order to keep them informed of our expectations and their children's upcoming experiences. Ideally, I would recommend providing teachers with staff development time to prepare in-house lessons and assessments to match the curriculum devised by the Alabama State Courses of Study for all subjects. Professional development costs would be funded through the Title I school budget.
My recommendation to my school's administration and faculty would be a progressive transition into hybrid e-learning beginning in grades kindergarten through second grade. In these grades, teachers would continue to supply students with opportunities to interact with technology through educational websites and with their interactive white boards. Beginning in third grade, students would begin experimenting with perhaps email communication and online assessment components of an e-learning plan. By fourth grade, students would continue with email and online assessment, and they would begin interacting with each other through digital lockers, message boards, and chat rooms. Finally, upon entering fifth grade, students would have full access to the services offered by Gaggle.net, including the addition of profile pages, social walls, SMS texting, and blogs.
I would further recommend the selection of two current full-time staff members to provide support with software and hardware issues associated with our e-learning efforts. The persons in those positions would receive a minimum yearly stipend of approximately $2,500.00 for their time and efforts. They would work collaboratively to handle instructor and parent training initiatives, and would deal with budgetary needs such as acquisition of funds via grants, sponsorships, etc.
While it would be difficult to pinpoint exact costs of e-learning implementation at this early stage, here are some approximate figures for known costs: 1) Support Personnel Stipends for two teachers at $5,000.00; 2) Quia.com subscriptions for 31 instructors at $1,550.00; and 3) Gaggle.net subscriptions for 601 students $3,606.00.
In sum, there are a multitude of tools already in place to make e-learning a reality in elementary schools at relatively low costs. Our school would be an excellent candidate for the adoption of a blended e-learning initiative, based on our progressive and comprehensive technological inventory and proven success through my own classes over the last five years.
References
Accountability reporting system. (2010). Alabama State Department of Education. Retrieved from http://www.alsde.edu/Accountability/Accountability.asp
Barbour, M., & Plough, C. (2009, July/August). Social networking in cyberschooling: Helping to make online learning less isolating. TechTrends, 53(4), 56-60. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.proxy1.ncu.edu/docview/223114848?accountid=28180
Broadbent, B. (2002). Spotlight on learning: Frameworks for design and development. In ABCs of e-learning: Reaping the benefits and avoiding the pitfalls (pp. 125-126). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer.
Cavanaugh, C., Gillan, K. J., Kromrey, J., Hess, M., & Blomeyer, R. (2004, October). The effects of distance education on K-12 student outcomes: A meta-analysis. Retrieved from Learning Point Associates website: http://www.ncrel.org/tech/distance/k12distance.pdf
Council’s history. (n.d.). Council Traditional School: Handbook. Retrieved from http://council.mce.schoolinsites.com/Common/SchoolArea/HandbookPrint.asp?PolicyID=742
Council Traditional School: School action for excellence plan. (2010).
Gaggle applications. (2011). Gaggle.Net, Inc. Retrieved from https://www.gaggle.net/home/gaggle-apps
Gaggle: Frequently asked questions. (2011). Gaggle.Net, Inc. Retrieved from https://www.gaggle.net/home/gaggle-apps
Gaggle safety. (2011). Gaggle.Net, Inc. Retrieved from https://www.gaggle.net/home/gaggle-apps
Gaggle: Technical/Network administrators. (2011). Gaggle.Net, Inc. Retrieved from https://www.gaggle.net/home/gaggle-apps
Mobile County Public School System. (2010). Technology plan. Retrieved from http://www.mcpss.com/Download.asp?L=1&LMID=80757&PN=DocumentUploads&DivisionID=2145&DepartmentID=&SubDepartmentID=&SubP=&Act=Download&T=1&I=118000
Mortera-Gutierrez, F. (2006). Faculty best practices using blended learning in e-learning and face-to-face instruction. International Journal on ELearning, 5(3), 313-337. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.proxy1.ncu.edu/docview/210334991?accountid=28180
Quia Web: About Quia. (2011). IXL Learning. Retrieved from http://www.quia.com/help/tech/system-requirements.html
Quia Web: System requirements for Quia. (2011). IXL Learning. Retrieved from http://www.quia.com/help/tech/system-requirements.html
U. S. State Department of Education. (2004, January 6). Archived: National Technology Plan. In E-learning: Putting a world-class education at the fingertips of all children. Retrieved from http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/os/technology/reports/e-learning.html
