July 2006 — Case Studies
Print this article | Email this articleClick here to receive your FREE subscription to T.H.E. Journal
Utah: In Mint Condition
In the Classroom
So what does an eMINTS classroom look like? The first noticeable difference from a traditional classroom is the number of computers within easy reach of the students. The second difference is the presence of student teams working in various group roles on projects. The teacher has a laptop connected to a data projector and an interactive whiteboard— either an Interwrite School Board or a Smart Board. You’ll also find a classroom printer, a scanner, and a digital camera. What you won’t see is drill-and-practice software, or other content-rich software. Each student computer has an office suite, a graphical mapping tool, a web browser, and multimedia creation tools. Most apparent is the teacher’s use of classroom management strategies to focus student attention on learning goals.
Braegger’s students remain linked to her classroom even when
they are outside it. Like other eMINTS teachers, Braegger has a
classroom web page called MyEDesk,
where she posts timely links to assessments, curriculum projects
including webquests, and other student-focused instructional
resources. When Braegger wants her students to do research over
the internet, they go to her website and use the links there to lead
them to high-quality and relevant online resources.
Getting Results
A critical component of student achievement is understanding, as precisely as possible, how well students are doing in relation to the state standards. So, in addition to providing teachers with professional development on cooperative learning, questioning strategies, and technology, eMINTS also helps them learn how to conduct focused formative assessment. Utah has a stateadopted core curriculum, developed with a scope and sequence by which concepts are to be taught during each school year.
The state provides a pool of test items correlated to the core curriculum. Teachers learn how to draw items from the pool and construct assessments targeting specific standards and objectives in the core curriculum. Many students in high-access classrooms such as Braegger’s use open-source online software called UTIPS (Utah Test Item Pool Server), which contains the test item pool from the Utah State Office of Education.
Utah’s end-of-level test results bear out the impact that coupling professional development with technology can have on student achievement. For example, in 2005-2006, the statewide end-of-level proficiency pass rate for mathematics in fourth grade was 73.6 percent; the rate for students in eMINTS classrooms was 57.2 percent.
