Stilwell Junior High HyperStream Club recognized at Prometheus Awards

Students from Ruth Henderson’s HyperStream group were recognized at the state Prometheus Awards ceremony recently.

Congratulations to Stilwell Junior High Science Teacher Ruth Henderson and her students who are members of the after school club called HyperStream.  They were recently recognized at the annual Prometheus Awards  at Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines.

HyperStream is an after school club that features a partnership between business and education, focusing on students in grade 6th-12th.  HyperStream pairs schools/learning centers with local technology professionals to learn about the breadth of technology careers in a Club atmosphere.

As part of the Prometheus Awards Ceremony, the Technology Association of Iowa highlights and recognizes the successful efforts of selected HyperStream clubs.

This years recognition at the middle school level went to the Stilwell HyperStream Club, sponsored by Ruth Henderson.

Here’s the script from their recognition at the Prometheus Awards, which gives you a feel for what activities the group was involved in.

Prometheus Dinner Script

Hello, I’m Joshua Burke from FBL Financial Group

Partnerships:

Hyperstream can be summed up in one word: partnership. Our partnerships began with Hyperstream’s call for sponsors and ambassadors, which for Stilwell Junior High was answered by both Farm Bureau and IBM, two great companies that believe in creating local opportunities for excellence.

Teacher Champion:

The partnerships continued with the tremendous and tireless support of our teacher champion, Ruth Henderson.

Student Excellence:

And, most importantly partnerships were forged with the amazing and dedicated students of Stilwell Junior High. I have had the privilege of watching both the ambassadors and students grow in the midst of this time, and I knew we had just the right club mix when I saw our students having trouble choosing between the robotics and the web project. Within the Stilwell club we’ve had:
●        65 students attend at least one meeting with an average attendance of  20 students per meeting
●        The club has seen roughly a 70/30 split between young men and women in attendance.

Experiences:

I’d like to share with you two of the best moments from each of our club project teams. On the robotics side, I witnessed a student create a robot that would enter the combination lock on a school locker with the press of a button, I am still amazed by the ingenuity and creativity he brought to that endeavor. And, on the web team, I’ve been pleased to see our students go from looking at HTML code with glassy eyes, to watching them editing code on their own to obtain a desired effect on their pages. And, in the web group, I am particularly proud of the teamwork, patient understanding and the diversity of skills each has brought to the project.

Transition:

I’d like to introduce our next speaker this evening, Dani Roth.

Hi, I’m Dani Roth and in the 8th grade.

One of the reasons I like Hypersteam is because of the diversity of things we get to do.  Technology is such a broad field and our club has done projects in various technology areas.  You can be in Hyperstream even if you don’t like technical things like robotics.  Developing a website for our school has helped me realize how much I enjoy the technology field.

(Pointing at the slide of website screen shots).  Here are some of the websites we have created that will benefit the Stilwell community.  We built a website we called Homework Help that will assist students in doing their homework.  Another website has favorite recipes that students have chosen.  Another website is a listing of the various clubs and organizations sponsored by the school that students can participate in.  This is information that is not centrally available to the students previously.

A special thanks goes out to Mrs. Henderson, our teacher sponsor, for her efforts in getting a Hyperstream club at our school and for our ambassadors from Farm Bureau and IBM for teaching us about opportunities in technology.

Hi, I’m Ben Burright and in the 8th grade.

One of the reasons I have enjoyed Hyperstream over the past year is because we work in teams and help each other out.  I’m the lead on the Robotics team.  Hyperstream gives me the opportunity to work together with others building robots and figuring out how to make them do different tasks, like climbing stairs or opening lockers.  It was really neat to see how our team progressed each week and the different things we could program our robots to do.

This slide shows students working on some of the projects we did this past year.  In this corner is a picture of me building a robot that . . . . . . . . .

I really enjoyed learning from the ambassadors about engineering things, whether it be building the tallest structure out of marshmallows and spaghetti, racing the solar cars we built, or the various robots.  We also enjoyed the cookies and treats they provided in our meetings.

My notes from visiting 1:1 iPad deployment at Johnston Schools

As part of our district’s 1:1 study, we recently sent a team to visit the 1:1 roll out at Johnston Schools, Iowa. The following is not the final notes/findings from our entire group, but instead just a summary of my personal notes.

Tell us your story… Why did you go 1:1?

The desire to move to 1:1 was predominately driven by the community.  Several years ago, during community forums known as “Futures Meetings”, the community kept asking about 1:1 technology access for students.  The topic came up in every one of the community forums.

What results do see or expect to see?

NOTE: At the time we visited, the project was only 9 weeks old.

We expect the technology to support good teaching & learning practices. We also want our initiative to  promoting 21st century skills and digital literacy for students.

Immediately, they saw a difference in student engagement.

Staff have commented that they should shorten the passing time between classes.

Expect to increased focus on 21st century skills and digital literacy.

Feedback so far from parents, includes…  students are better organized, its more efficient, they seeing less paper used, and grading electronically is more efficient and provides more feedback to students in less time.  Parents also felt that the iPad was easier to use than a computer.

Other general notes……

How did you decide on which device?  Since the deployment was specific to grades 10-12 at the high school, they asked departments to help make the pros/cons list related to all of the final devices.  In the end, the departments helped to decide on the iPad.

How many positions were added due to the deployment?  2 FTEs were added, one related to training the other a technical position.

The policy planning took longer than they expected.  As they sent draft policies out for review, they had more revisions than they anticipated.  However, in the end, they felt it was time well spent.

Why was the high school chosen for the deployment? why not another grade?   Two reasons… 1) the “futures” meetings were the driving force behind the project and they focused on the future of the high school in specific.  2) they felt the project could make a significant difference in student engagement at the high school level.

The ability to annotate was significant for them… and Good Notes is the most popular classroom organizational app.

Do students feel that they need keyboards?  Most students adapt, and it’s usually only the adults who seem worried about this topic.  We really like their unique approach to addressing this –>  they created a keyboard cart.  A small cart with just wireless keyboards that a teacher could check out if they felt it was needed.

They created a very clear chart that outlines what is Negotiable and what is Non-Negotiable related to the iPad roll out.   For example, every teacher MUST use Moodle to post their classroom documents and syllabus.

Most professional development was done during the teachers common planning time.

PD contained:  keynote speaker at the start (they referred to as the fire-up), the Meet the iPad sessions, followed up with content specific app training.

How much push back was there on the roll out?  Most of it was when the project was announced, which was mostly concerns/fears about change.  They felt that they turned a significant corner about 4 months before students received their devices.

Student played several key roles in the roll out….  teams of students helped with various issues such as publicity, technical assistance, the actual roll outs, and even helped in developing a mobile app for high school.

They are using Casper Suite from JAMF to manage the devices.  There is a core group of apps installed on all iPads, and then students can use their own personal iTunes accounts to download their own apps.

At the launch event, parents and students were required to attend one of four optional dates/times.  They had 100% attendance.

They gave each student one stylus with their iPads, as they felt it was critical for using the device for annotation.  However, they only provided one – after this, students are able to purchase additional ones from the media center.

Web filtering is provided both at school and at home (as well any location where the device is connected to wifi).  They are using Light Speed Filtering for this task.

Students are required to use the district provided iPad and to use the district provided case.

If the device is lost or stolen – the family pays the full replacement cost.

The district does purchase Apple Care with each iPad, which covers a certain amount of damage.

Families are required to pay a $50 deposit before they can take the iPad home.  If the device is working at the end of the school year, the $50 deposit is returned.

The digital camera/ video camera has been significant for science courses – as its used to record and document their science labs.

What are the core technologies available in each classroom?  Projector, teacher laptop, and an iPad for each student.  Teachers are using software to display their iPad through their teacher laptop and then to the classroom projector.

They conducted some pilot testing in some classrooms the year before the launch.

Heard from several teachers… “Classroom management and physically moving around the classroom is more important now.”

For their first year of the roll out, they are monitoring:  student behavior incidents, student attendance, grades, and staff / student surveys.

Student iPads are randomly pulled from the classroom and are evaluated by staff.  They have found that word gets out fast when this happens… and students understand that their iPad can be taken from them at any point in time for review.

They estimate the total cost of the iPad to be $720 per student.. which includes the apps, management software, and the case.  Estimated $30 to $40 of this is specifically for apps.

Socrative is very popular for promoting formative assessment.

iPad reminders posted on the walls of Johnston High School

Challenges / issues….

Work flow issues….  Several staff we talked with are concerned about the day to day workflow of submitting and grading assignments.  It appeared that many of them are still working with email as the method of submitting and routing of student assignments.  In fact, one teacher commented that he feels that it takes longer to grade assignments than via paper – but he’s hopeful that this will improve.

Distracted by games...    Many staff commented on this – but there are two basic camps on this issue.  One side thinks it’s a technical issue and the solution is to either block all games or not allow students to use their iTunes accounts.  The other side sees an opportunity to teach students about responsible usage.  They pointed out that adults are distracted by their devices too, and we need to make this a teachable moment.   (Side note: other 1:1 iPad visits made this same comment, but also noted that it gets better with time and clearer expectations)

Written by Brian Abeling, @wdmtech