| State: Louisiana | Number of Students: 3,150 |
| School Type: Charter Management Organization | Free and Reduced Lunch: 95.8% |
| Grade Level: PK-12 | English Language Learners: N/A |
School Context
This is a highly innovative charter school network who has been one of the pioneers of the learning lab model. While their lab model has been established for the past four years, they are looking to bring blended learning into the classroom for in-classroom rotations. The network serves a majority low socioeconomic students in urban areas.
State of Technology
The network’s blended learning approach has been lab centric, but they are trying to figure out how to bring blended learning tools into the classroom. To do this they are supporting an innovation fellowship for teachers who want to push the envelope and figure out a new model moving forward. These teacher are using a combination of practice questions from Khan Academy, their own EdPuzzle videos and formative quizzes along the way. While all these resources are great, they need a way to keep track of them.
They would like in a learning management system to have the ability to assign students online content, organize and store online resources, track what students complete, and incorporate digital assessments, quizzes or polls, and collaboration features which have the ability to share content and resource lists with other teachers.
Their teachers have experimented with keeping track of assignments and resources through overly liked Google Docs. They are filled with links and teachers are trying to keep track of assignments and resources on these docs. They have also tried to build our own Google sites, used Gooru and Power My Lessons. However, none of these solutions are supportive of their goals. Gooru is not clean enough or easy to use and neither is Power My Lesson. They want something easier for both students and teachers to use.
Tech Needs & Requirements
Teachers will be creating and uploading their own assignments and resources (i.e. they would load up a pre-test, a video lesson and then instructions for students to go to ST Math when done with their work.) Teachers need the ability to build sequence of tasks for the day, group kids for differentiated assignments, assign kids to groups, and lightly monitor usage. The most important is that it is easy for the teacher to use on the front end. Differentiated grouping assignments would be very appealing.
The tool must be easy for teachers and students to use, help teachers track and organize their materials and easily share those with teachers and be able to add a variety of online resources to the resource library. The network offers students 2:1 mostly Chromebooks and Chromeboxes, but it varies from class to class. They would like to be able to monitor usage lightly. If assessments are integrated, tracking that data will be important. All they need is clean, simple data that demonstrates what a student completed and whether they used any resources. The tool should incorporate Google sign-on, but it is not critical.