The Instructional Practices Inventory evaluates school wide engagement to foster organizational learning. The IPI produces a school-wide picture of student engaged learning that serves as a basis for faculty reflection and instructional improvement. This school-wide profile is a detailed image of instruction across an entire school for a specified period of time.

Dr. Jerry Valentine : University of Missouri School of Education

The IPI is a really nice way to get a quick instructional picture of your schools instructional practices. The conversations that take place after a small group has briefly observed a classroom are so powerful and enlightening for those involved. The IPI calls for small groups of staff members (teachers and administrators) to briefly observe a large set of classrooms in a small time period and assign a rating from 1 to 6. In a rating of 1 the students are completely disengaged, whereas, in a rating of 6 the students are labeled as “Student Active Engaged Learning”

Student Active Engaged Learning::Students are engaged in higher order learning. Common examples include authentic project work, cooperative learning, hands-on learning, problem-based learning, demonstrations, and research.

The IPI is intended to foster organizational learning, and it does. I believe it is suggestive in nature, and that is a good thing. We want our students to be more engaged and we want that more often. I believe, the completion of an IPI a few times a year, can really get the wheels spinning and people talking. It brings the issue of engagement to the forefront, where it should be.

So, to help this conversation take place, and remove the perceived barriers to completing and participating in an IPI, I have begun the process of building a mobile web tool to help get these conversations started. I have not released it to the public yet, as I have yet to contact Dr. Valentine. However, I hope to soon.

• Class Participation
• In-Class Work
• Out-of-Class Work
• Tests & Quizzes

Gathering the longitudinal data, allows staff to witness the students progress outside of the traditional grading system in real-time. This project has been used as a Tier One intervention at the high school level. Traditionally, individual conversations about the progress of students have filtered through the guidance counselor. Anecdotally, the increased communication this system has provided, has led to many conversations among teachers that probably would not have occurred.

How else can we use data in this manner to help spur communication?

Student Effort = Authentic Product + Audience

Nothing New Here – Just a moment in my day, that reminded me.
All education terms that any teacher might hear on a regular day at school. I noticed something among some of our media students today. Move their product outside of the classroom, and the stakes get raised. They get more serious and more hyper critical of their product. Why does this matter? Turning work in? How about turning stuff out into the world. I am simply reminding myself to always consider the audience when designing activities and projects for students.

• People will click the same 5 links (Webmail, Attendance, Gradebook, etc.) the most. No shocker here.
• Too many clicks to get to a piece of information discourages users.
• Once something is there, it is expected to be there.
• Everyone’s information is a priority.
• It is a great spot to infuse professional development
• People respond to controversial and graphic titles. Much like a nut-graf in a newspaper, or an above the fold headline.

Once again nothing new here. However, I have found that posting articles with interesting titles and graphics get people to click and read the articles. This is evident from some of the conversations I hear occasionally around the building. What an opportunity! So I challenge myself to the following for the next year:

• How can we better leverage the “Staff” splash page to encourage more targeted professional growth?

LESSONS LEARNED: Great example at Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville, Ill., of how to use data to support students who make good choices. During students’ free periods, they can seek extra help in specially designated academic resource centers. Rather than taking a time-consuming paper-based name log, center teachers scan barcodes on student IDs, triggering a series of updates: an email goes to the student’s parent, complimenting the student for seeking extra help. (“The emails go out from the department chair and it’s all positive,” says tech coordinator, Joe Macchia. “Parents feel like their students made a good choice.”) The student’s academic advisor gets an update on a dashboard that includes test scores, GPA, and the subject in which they’re seeking support. Classroom teachers can also keep better track of which students are actively using the resource centers. The key to winning support from students and faculty in using the system, Joe says: learning to use the data to support students–not just to dog them.

Simple, easy way to post your objectives on the board. This project is still in its infancy, I want to add the ability for teachers to save their goals/messages and upload their own custom frames.

Some staff members use powerpoint, some use the whiteboard/chalkboard. However, I wanted to create a quick tool accessible from our intranet page to simplify the process, and make use of the mounted projectors in some classrooms. Teachers can simply type directly on our splash page and get back a full-framed powerpoint like slide to display at the beginning of class. It beats the heck out of Times New Roman 64pt in a Word document or for that matter Comic Sans. Added bonus, with the collection of this data, we get to see how clear our collective instructional objectives really are!

Thanks to Dr. Lance Fuhrer our AP for curriculum and instruction for his design prowess.

This year we have modified the original academic advisory attendance system I created using increased access to data that fosters self-advocacy among students that enter our building each and everyday.

Our approach is three-fold: communicate via e-mail with parents on a daily basis about their specific students, provide educational leaders in the building the up-to-the minute data necessary to shape the stream of students using academic resource centers, and allow classroom teachers the ability to seamlessly recommend students to an academic advisory center for additional help outside the classroom. These tasks can be difficult without the use of technology.

Academic advisory is an important part of what we do at Neuqua Valley. During student free periods, department specific rooms with subject area teachers are available for students to seek additional assistance with their classes. Through the use of an in-house, custom-built web application, academic advisory teachers scan the barcodes on student id’s, which triggers a series of events to notify parents about their child’s attendance. This email is sent out daily and commends the student for making a good choice in seeking additional help.

The collection and subsequent communication of this data point has shown to be powerful in helping students make good choices. Parents have been extremely grateful for the positive communication. In addition, the data provides them the tools and information to partner with the school while encouraging students to seek the help they need.

In addition, building leaders have real-time access to a data dashboard to parse the information and data gathered from student usage of the academic advisory centers. The access includes data that combines student standardized test scores, GPA, usage by time of day and day of week, and the course that a student is seeking help with. This information has proved extremely valuable in targeting smaller groups of students by encouraging them to seek additional help.

Finally, classroom teachers have the opportunity to recommend students to the academic resource centers when they feel a student requires additional help. This event also triggers a series of events that include automated parent communication regarding the teacher’s recommendation, as well as, whether the student has attended as recommended.

Neuqua Valley is a school of 4100 students, custom web applications built specifically to collect and analyze data have been a part of how we educate. Many collection points both traditional in manner and newly created have changed the way we look at data. Data at Neuqua Valley is not just a series of passive collection points about student achievement. Everything we gather enlightens how we teach and informs us about those whom we are teaching.  There is that Template Again

I have created a few web applications that address some of the common teaching and learning themes prevalent at Neuqua Valley. NVHSclouds is one that came from some discussions with fellow teachers, I built it in a night and we used it shortly thereafter for some staff development as well as in classrooms within Neuqua.

NVHSclouds is simple. Word clouds became really popular last year, so I created a way for teachers to leverage the power and “coolness” factor to a cooperative learning activity. NVHSclouds allows a class to enter words or a statement on a topic or discussion question, the application counts common words to see where the class sentiment lies, and what words are used more than others. It has served as an informal, formative assessment tool and has shaped the path for discussions in quite a few classes. In addition it uses the open interface of WORDLE to create more visually appealing word clouds.

Creating the inNoVate classroom. A goal of the instructional leadership team at Neuqua Valley during the 2010-2011 school year was the discussion and eventual creation of a different type of classroom. A classroom that is specially focused on developing and learning from students’ unique needs as twenty-first century learners. From the paint on the walls to the furniture available. Rolling Whiteboards, two projectors and rolling whiteboards. The project was a collaboration of teachers, administrators and students.

During the 2011-12 school year these classrooms would be created with the purpose of fostering student engagement. We intend to learn a great deal by simply creating something different, and hope to spread some of the things we learn through other parts of the learning environment.

Core Beliefs of the inNoVate classroom
1.Collaborative and engaging instruction is effective instruction for all subjects.
2. Engagement is best built around student participation in a collaborative learning environment.

Six Design Principles of the inNoVate classroom
1. Understanding of 21st Century Skills and Outcomes.
2. Relevant and Applied Curriculum.
3. Informative Assessment.
4. A Culture of Innovation and Creativity.
5. Social and Emotional Connections with Students.
6. Ubiquitous Access to Technology.