TECHNOS e-Zine

August 29, 2008

January 2008—Vol. 5, No. 1

Online Digital Resources

AIT premieres NEW online digital resources from Merced County Office of Education to help students with core mathematics skills. See Math Quiz and Digital Math for more information.

Welcome to the technos.net e-newsletter, published by AIT’s Technos Press. You’ll find valuable information here about AIT products and services and other noteworthy news from the world of education. Please let us know what you think, or what you’d like to see here, by emailing us at: editor@ait.net. Thank you!

Featured Interview

Elizabeth Wolzak, Senior Manager, Instructional Design, PBS TeacherLine

In 2007, PBS TeacherLine launched a professional development growth and collaboration online tool called PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection. This ambitious project, made possible by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, is aimed at supporting the work of instructional coaches, mentors, and professional developers based at schools. The person leading the development of this project at PBS TeacherLine is Elizabeth Wolzak, who has been working in close collaboration with AIT’s staff to develop content for the service. Ms. Wolzak was interviewed by AIT’s Director of Education, of Education, Elaine Larson, via email in December.

E.L.: What is the mission of PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection, and what are the major goals for the program?

E.W.: PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection is a professional development growth and collaboration tool aimed at supporting the work of instructional coaches, mentors, and school-based professional developers. Eventually PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection will sustain and support the work of professional learning communities. This mission for PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection ties directly to the second Ready To Teach Grant awarded to PBS by the United States Department of Education.

The Dept. of Education has strong interest in fortifying the work of instructional coaches, mentors and professional learning communities. Grant funding was used to research the needs of instructional coaches and mentors and to tap expertise within PBS TeacherLine, which developed and continues to manage over 100 online courses for teacher professional development. PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection was developed applying results of the research and with the goals of the U.S. Dept. of Education and PBS TeacherLine in mind.

How would you describe PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection from the users’ perspective? In other words, how do you see an instructional coach or mentor using PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection?

PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection approaches professional development on two levels. First, the resources help school-based professional developers to be a “guide on the side,” providing suggestions for facilitating adult learning and building a community of learners. Second, it offers a rich library of instructional strategies and resources to draw upon while helping teachers accomplish their professional development goals. To that end, the functionality of PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection positions the coach, mentor, or other onsite professional developer as the curriculum expert, able to deliver a unique, customizable coaching experience to each teacher.

Instructional coaches and mentors will engage in what we call the three S’s: Search, Save, and Suggest. PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection allows school-based professional developers to search for resources in our vast library of resources. These resources can be saved, labeled, organized, and commented upon in one dedicated, personal space called “My Resources.” This action alone saves the coach or mentor a huge amount of time. Then, the resources can be found easily, used, and reused. From here, the coach or mentor can craft and send suggestions to the teachers s/he coaches or mentors to meet their professional development needs.

Read the entire Featured Interview.

Featured Article

‘PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection’ Assists Educators with Instructional Coaching Responsibilities

Content enables instructional coaches to deliver customized professional development to their peers while building a community of learners

In June 2007 PBS TeacherLine® launched a new product to help educators build and improve their coaching skills as they work with their peers to increase student achievement. Master teachers, department chairs, and others are assuming the role of instructional coach—providing job-embedded, ongoing training to their peers—as schools nationwide transition to a new model of professional development. PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection is an expansive online suite of tools designed to support instructional coaches and others providing onsite, continuous professional development for teachers.

PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection features resource collections, known as Coaching Modules, which incorporate both theoretical and practical information to support teachers’ learning goals and provide a framework for setting expectations and outcomes around particular instructional strategies. The Coaching Modules contain various media from the PBS TeacherLine online courses, including videos, articles, interactives, and Web-based resources, and are searchable by topic, grade level, subject-area standards, and media type. Coaches are able to search on instructional strategies and find applicable resources for coaching their teachers in dealing with opportunities and challenges in the classroom. Coaches may select one or two items from a Coaching Module, or the entire set of resources on a particular topic. Currently, the content has been customized for middle school math and K–8 reading and language arts, instructional technology, and instructional strategies. Other instructional areas and grade levels will soon follow.

AIT staff—content experts, education writers, and database managers—have worked on a contract basis with the PBS TeacherLine staff since early 2006 in the development of PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection. AIT’s role in the project is to repurpose the content of existing PBS TeacherLine courses into smaller collections of resources and to create descriptive metadata tags for all of the repurposed content.

Coaches use the resources with teachers for building skills in:

Assessing student performance and achievement
Communicating with students’ families
Integrating technology
Deepening teacher content knowledge
Understanding specific strategies for improving classroom practice.

An embedded communication system makes it easy for coaches to access and forward specific resources to one or more teachers. Teachers can rate, tag, and provide comments on any resource. A discussion board allows coaches to communicate with teachers across geographic areas to create discussion groups and share ideas.

PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection approaches coaching on two levels. First, it shows coaches how to be a “guide on the side,” providing suggestions for facilitating adult learning and building a community of learners. Second, it offers coaches a rich library of instructional strategies and resources to draw upon while helping teachers accomplish their professional development goals. To that end, the functionality of PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection positions the coach as the curriculum expert, able to deliver a unique, customizable coaching experience to each teacher. It can support face-to-face, online, or blended coaching models.

“Educators across the country were instrumental in helping us design PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection,” said Rob Lippincott, senior vice president of education for PBS. “They piloted the program this year and gave us the direct feedback that helped us create the strongest coaching package possible with the greatest number of embedded resources.”

Educators can learn more about PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection at www.pbs.org/teacherline/peerconnection.

What’s New at AIT?

Democracy It Is! Honored Again

We are pleased to announce that program No. 8 of the social studies series Democracy It Is!—“Activism and Social Justice”—has been awarded an AVA Platinum Award. According to the award letter, “AVA’s Platinum Award is presented to those entries judged to be among the most outstanding submissions in the competition. Platinum Winners are recognized for their excellence in terms of quality, creativity, and resourcefulness.” Congratulations to the production team of Wisconsin Educational Communications Board, Wisconsin Public Television, and AIT!

Partners’ Online Math Resources Now Available to Educators Everywhere

AIT has recently partnered with the Merced County Office of Education in central California to make their online math resources available to educators everywhere. Digital Math and Math Quiz are designed to help kids gear up for the high-stakes tests and to allow them to get both immediate feedback and tutorial help on a variety of math topics. The focus is in the key areas where students seem to have the hardest time from grade 6 to 9, specifically Pre-Algebra, Geometry, and Algebra.

Digital Math shows a problem with an icon on the screen that allows the student to see a short video tutorial on how to solve the problem. Problems cover number sense, graphing equations, measurement, using the order of operations, calculating areas, and just about every topic covered in grade 6-9 Math standards. Digital Math was created directly to correlate to California state standards for Math—and the education staff at AIT evaluated how well the material matched other state standards and found an excellent correlation. See a demo of Digital Math.
Math Quiz, likewise, covers important math concepts that kids need to know to graduate. This resource is set up as a competitive game, with a timed multiple-choice test, pulsating music, and Anime-style graphics to appeal to young learners. The results permit students to review their work and to seek out a tutorial—this time from an animated instructor—to learn specifically how to approach the problem. Students can self-assess their competency in each topic area, and they get valuable practice at taking the test under time pressure. A tour of Math Quiz is coming soon! Check this space later.

These new resources are priced to be affordable for every school at just $150 per building. District, regional, or state licenses are also available—contact Jo Flick at jflick@ait.net for a quote.

Lessons ALIVE!

Lessons ALIVE!—Free Online Lesson Plans Feature AIT’s Programs

Our Lessons ALIVE! feature provides free lesson plans corresponding to AIT’s products. We give teachers ideas for going beyond our videos’ teacher guides and for developing lesson plans that combine media from different series or select segments from programs. The lesson plans highlighted in Lessons ALIVE! promote contemporary ideas about structured learning environments and model best practices in teaching.

This month, we’re featuring a very special Language Arts Lesson: All the World’s a Stage: Using Readers Theater to Teach History and Develop Reading Fluency, for students in grades 4–10. This Lesson plan aligns to the Standards for the English Language Arts (1996) of The National Council of Teachers of English, Nos. 1, 3, 4, and 11; Standard No. 2-E of the National Standards for History Basic Education (1996) of the National Center for History in the Schools; and Standard II.e. of the Expectations of Excellence: Curriculum Standards for Social Studies (1994), developed by the Task Force of the National Council for the Social Studies. It is a unique mix of history, science, language arts and arts.

Using AIT Products:

Front Row Center, program 5, “From Page to Performance: ‘Ain’t Got Long to Stay Here’”
Heroes Read, program 18, “One Fine Day: A Radio Play”
Inventing Flight, program 2, “Wright Time, Wright Place”
Retro News, program 3, “The History of Aviation”

Overview:

Why teach fluency to older students? Because non-fluent readers are busy concentrating on decoding words, they lose focus on what the text means. Consequently, fluency plays a major role in how well students understand science and social studies information. It is vital that all students become fluent readers so that they can understand the vast amount of expository information they encounter beginning with third grade.

A popular strategy for building fluency today is the Readers Theater (RT). In RT, students “perform” a reading of a book-based script, rereading or “rehearsing” together several times before a final performance in front of an audience. Without sets, props, costumes, or memorization, students have the opportunity to perform within a safe environment that makes learning fun. And as they rehearse, students learn how the voice can be used to project meaning, which not only improves their reading skills but also increases their comprehension of the material. Although RT developed its niche in elementary language arts classes, it can be used as a powerful learning tool for content area classes as well, and students as old as high school can benefit from the experience.

Objectives:

Understand the characteristics of Readers Theater and work in cooperative groups to create an RT script from a narrative historical account or an excerpt from historical fiction.
Demonstrate proficiency in oral reading fluency (including oral expression, phrasing, reading rate, and accuracy) within a Readers Theater experience.
(Optional, with Extension Activity) Comprehend grade level historical topics, responding to essential questions about enduring themes of history, the motivations of key characters in an historical era, and concepts of time, continuity, and change.

Check out all of our Lessons ALIVE! lesson plans.

Let us know if you’ve created your own unique lesson plans by submitting them to the Technos e-Zine editor at: editor@ait.net. Selected entries will be published in future issues of the e-Zine.

Tech Notes

Report on National Media Market 2007

Exhibitors

The National Media Market (NMM) was held October 7–11 in Mesa, Arizona. The Market is a showcase of instructional media resources for schools, colleges, and public libraries. Fifty-five exhibitors attended the Market, an increase of 10% over 2006, and the maximum allowed for NMM. (In fact, 11 exhibitors were turned away from this year’s Market.)

The Market represents more than just motion media. More and more, exhibitors are presenting other media resources and services. For the first time this year, a closed caption service agency, Caption Max, presented at the Market. A number of providers offered digital media collections or distribution systems. Seattle Community College Educational Television Services, a partner of AIT, sponsored a presentation about delivery of rich media using online repositories for media and local distribution and management software. Two long-standing exhibitors who offer online library media booking and management systems are now offering to play media-on-demand or order media for delivery seamlessly. The potential for delivering a hard copy DVD to a client or allowing them to download a media file, based on what is easiest and best, all the while keeping track copyright concerns, is now a reality.

AIT attended the market both to showcase our new media resources and to promote the services we provide in creating metadata and correlating content to state curriculum standards. For us, this means that everyone attending the National Media Market—both exhibitors and buyers—were potential clients for AIT.

Buyers

Buyer attendance was down 17% this year, with 130 total buyers in attendance. Thirty-eight buyers were new to the Market this year. Having about a third of the buyers new each year has been a trend in NMM and represents both the turn-over of personnel within the buying agencies and the fast-evolving market for instructional materials. For instance, this year public libraries represented 18% of the total buyer group as public and state libraries move to acquire instructional media to support patron demand for it. Previously, public libraries represented less than 10% of the total buyer group. Educational broadcasters, on the other hand, are dwindling in attendance, reflecting the trend for public television stations to reduce licensing of instructional materials or to move toward alternative services.

An unplanned highlight of the Market for many buyers was an informal discussion about digital transitions, held the second day of the conference. This spontaneous event was planned via NMM’s online wiki discussions that took place in the final weeks before the Market was held. The discussion was scheduled as a 30-minute informal time just prior to time set aside for buyers to screen new materials—but the meeting went on for 90 minutes! Buyers sought the opportunity to network with their peers about the methods available for instituting a systematic district or statewide transition to providing video-on-demand. Some had been through several different video-on-demand services already, and others were just contemplating this transition. There was a lot of expertise to share, and many questions and concerns posed. One state agency observed that they came to the Market to select a digital video-on-deman d service and went home with a whole different outlook and plan to create their own service instead. It proved to be a very valuable and timely event.

Next Year

The National Media Market moves east of the Mississippi in 2008 for the first time in nearly a decade next year. The Market will be held in Lexington, Kentucky, September 22–26, 2008. For more information, see the National Media Market’s Web site.

Reported by Joann Flick, Marketing/Sales professional for AIT, and Secretary of the National Media Market Board of Directors (2006-2009+).

etc. (News You Need)

Calling All Education Journalists…and Educators! The Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media and the Costen Foundation have launched a Web site for jou rnalists that will help them cover one of the most important aspects of education: teaching and learning. The site, “Tools for Reporting on Teaching: What to Look for in Classrooms,” provides classroom videos and commentaries from teaching and journalism experts in the hope of helping reporters ask better questions and increase their visits to classrooms. In addition, the site offers summaries of research on the importance of good teachers and how teachers improve their craft. Teaching and learning may be the most challenging and complex issues in education, and that makes it all the more difficult to capture in a news story. Hopefully this new tool can help media encapsulate what good teachers do and as a result increase the admiration society has for teachers.

The National Center for Education Statistics has issued a new report which shows that, on average, U.S. fourth-graders scored higher than their international peers on the 2006 assessment of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). The assessment had previously been administered in 2001 and, in that year, U.S. students scored higher than 23 education systems, lower than three, and not significantly different from eight. In 2006, U.S.students scored higher than 22 education systems, lower than 10, and not significantly different from 12 others. Additionally, the average score for U.S. students was not significantly different overall in 2006 than it was in 2001. Still, a greater percentage of U.S. students reached each achievement benchmark compared to the international median percentage: 12 percent of U.S. students were advanced, 47 percent met the high benchmark, and 82 percent met the intermediate level. Access the report at: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2008017.

The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation will offer approximately 33 fellowships per year at $30,000 stipend each, to lure top college students into the teaching profession. The ambitious purpose of this new fellowship program from the Foundation, located in Princeton, NJ, is that it will transform U.S. teacher education. Currently, this fellowship program is available to students in graduate education programs at the universities of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Washington; and at Stanford. Fellowships will also be available to students at universities in select states—beginning with Indiana—that agree to remake their graduate education programs along the Foundation’s required guidelines.

The Mississippi Department of Education will host1,000 students, principals, and teachers at the first-ever Destination Graduation: Teen Summit, to be held in Jackson on January 15. The MDE’s summit is part of its dropout prevention plan to cut the state’s high school dropout rate in half by 2011–2012. The Mississippi Department of Education Office of Drop-Out Prevention is is the organization responsible for the administration of Mississippis statewide dropout prevention program. Joining the MDE in sponsoring this Summit are the Education Commission of the States and State Farm®. They will help in hosting the participants and facilitating the development of teen-led strategies to address the dropout problem. MDE will hold a similar summit on February 28 to engage bu siness and community leaders, faith-based organizations, and parents in a process to identify and implement localized dropout prevention strategies in every community across the state. For more information, go to: http://www.mde.k12.ms.us/MondayMemo/MMprint.html.

Westinghouse Electric Company sponsors the N-Visioning a Brighter Future grant program, which awards funding to middle and high schools for creative, hands-on projects. Administered by the company’s speakers bureau, N-Vision, the grant program is designed to encourage both teachers and students to develop projects based on energy, math, science, or technology. The competition is open to all middle and high schools where Westinghouse has a presence. The five schools awarded $1,000 each to carry out their proposed projects during the 2007–08 grants are:
- Bloomfield (CT) High School, for an 11th-grade chemistry project, “Nuclear Medicine,” which will help students develop an understanding of nuclear chemistry through classroom activities, lab work, and interactive simulations
- McKeesport (PA) High School, for the “Green With Envy” project, which will look at two different energy sources that can lower carbon dioxide emissions: nuclear power and solar power
- Seneca Valley (PA) Intermediate High School, where students in 10th-grade honors chemistry and algebra will participate in the “Radioactive Decay: An Interdisciplinary Approach” project
- Sharpsville Area (PA) Middle School, for the “Heat of Fusion: I’m Melting, I’m Melting!” project, in which students will conduct an experiment to determine how much heat is needed to melt one gram of ice
- Yough High School (PA), where students will measure radon in the lowest level of their homes as part of the project, “Radiation From the Ground Up!”
For more information about the N-Vision grant program for next year, go to: http://www.westinghousenuclear.com/docs/n_vision_grant.pdf.

AIT Products & Services

The following AIT Products are featured in this month’s Lessons ALIVE! free lesson plan. These programs are being offered at a 10% discount for the month of January.

Through Front Row Center’s seventeen 15-minute programs, students in grades 6-12 will meet famous guest artists, along with lesser-known performers. They will go backstage, be onstage, and sit in the audience. They will learn about stage makeup, choreographed combat scenes, dance, and music—and d iscover the courage and commitment that drive performing artists. This program is available digitally. Contact AIT Sales for more information.

Heroes Read features authors of contemporary children’s literature discussing and reading their own works. Revised standards in Language Arts call for children to be able to critique, interpret, and respond to literature. This se ries of three programs for students in grades 3–7 is an excellent resource to help educators address those standards. The motivation and inspiration of an author is revealed, and then that author’s work is enjoyed. Heroes Read may be used at the primary-intermediate level as a sensory exploration of works that explore many cultures and cross-curricular themes. It may also be used with middle school writing classes to expose students to the careers and lives of authors. This program is available digitally. Contact AIT Sales for more information.

Inventing Flight is correlated to national and state education standards and guides students through the science and history behind the Wright Brothers’ invention of powered flight. Through the six 10-minute programs, students in grades 6–8 learn key science concepts and processes by flying kites, testing gliders, and experimenting with helicopter propellers; then analyzing their results. Visit the Inventing Flight Web site. This program, available on VHS and DVD, is also available digitally. Contact AIT Sales for more information. Inventing Flight was also featured in another free Lessons ALIVE! lesson plan: On the Move: Understanding Newton’s Laws of Motion.

COMING SOON! Retro News is a fast-paced magazine-style show hosted by kids and for kids from 9–12 years old. From their virtual newsroom, teen journalists bring significant, interesting, and humorous historic events to life with actual news footage from the archives. In these thirteen 30-minute porgrams, kids in grades 4–7 will see and hear newsmakers like Albert Einstein, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart, and John F. Kennedy; they will see Mt. Rushmore take shape, the Wright Brothers fly, and John Glenn blast into space. The special feature Innovation will show the big advances of the early 20th Century like the telephone, the airplane and plastic as well as plenty of wacky inventions like the rain-making machine and the card table that deals for you. The young hosts introduce viewers to the people and events that have shaped our world. They mix the facts with plenty of fun. The segments “Sports,” “Vintage Vogue,” and “Fun and Games” will give kids the giggles with unusual sights like edible hats, bowling elephants, monkeys driving a train, and flagpole dancers. Retro News is jam-packed with the facts students should know (e.g., Theodore Roosevelt created more National Parks than any other U.S. President), as well as those that are just fun to know (Teddy’s children let their pony ride on the White House elevator). But history is only the beginning.

Please take another look at some of AIT’s stellar Professional Development programs…

The Four Keys to Effective Classroom Behavior Management: Building Community, Motivation, Responsibility, and School Safety, by Richard Curwin and Allen Mendler, will help you explore four key skill areas essential to establishing a safe, supportive atmosphere in which all students can learn:

Building classroom community
Motivation strategies that improve student learning
Developing responsibility in students
Implementing school safety procedures

To order, visit the Solution Tree Web site. Electronic transmission rights (digital or broadcast) may be leased by contacting Joann Flick at AIT.

Behind the Lesson consists of the professional development videos that accompany Into the Book—a multimedia teaching resource designed to enhance reading comprehension for K–3 students, as well as their ability to think and learn across the curriculum. The nine Into the Book student episodes feature an extraordinary classroom where a group of ordinary students use powerful learning strategies to enter the world of the story. These 15-minute programs show student viewers how to use these strategies when reading fiction, nonfiction, or everyday text. They also model real-life applications of the strategies. Behind the Lesson takes you behind the scenes as teachers demonstrate how they are using the Into the Book strategies effectively with their students. Programs combine actual classroom footage with dialogue and personal reflection on instructional practices. An interactive Web site and comprehensive print materials round out the curriculum package. This project was developed by the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction and a team of experienced educators. It is produced by Wisconsin Public Television and AIT. Available on VHS and DVD. Read the TECHNOS e-Zine article about the project.

Youth Crises II: Play It Safe—Plan for Crises. More than ever, the safety of our schools depends upon the fast, deliberate reactions of staff during crises. When facing violence and danger, effective and thorough crisis plans are crucial to preventing trauma, injury, and loss of life. Schools today have pressing needs to refine procedures, implement prevention plans, train staff, and coordinate efforts among administrators, teachers, district officials, and law enforcement. This program provides materials for introducing district personnel to the features of local plans and/or for providing them with guidelines for reviewing and evaluating these. It suggests models for fleshing out draft or incomplete plans; for training school staff as well as district personnel in their responsibilities during crises; and for adding guidelines for handling specific emergencies in addition to those in the 1997 Youth Crises: Planning the Response. This 40-minute program is available digitally; contact AIT Sales for more information. Both Youth Crises programs are available as a set.

Techniques for Reading Instruction features reading consultant-teacher Teresa Irvin demonstrating strategies for developing phonetic and word-attack skills in two 30-minute videos. She also shares techniques to improve student comprehension in reading. Geared toward elementary-level schoolteachers, one program is focused on emergent readers and one on developing reading comprehension skills. Each set of instructional skills is demonstrated with a group of target-age students. This series also provides access to the online viewer’s guides. Produced by Kern County Superintendent of Schools, Bakersfield, CA. Available digitally; contact AIT Sales for more information.

AIT’s Creating Our Economy is a comprehensive video-supported economics resource that incorporates geography. With real-life applications representing a range of industries and enterprises, the series explores key economic principles from the inside out. Go to the farm, get on the production line with manufacturing, and visit with the education and service sectors. Through a series of 11 lessons detailed in the comprehensive teacher’s guide and five segmented videos, Creating Our Economy helps students meet 16 essential economics standards recommended by the National Council on Economic Education. Each unit in the 200+ page teacher’s guide includes structured lesson plans, black-line masters, Web-based activities, and opportunities to integrate economics across the curriculum. A video discussion guide is also included in the print materials. For more information, visit the Creating Our Economy Web page. Five 20-minute programs for students in grades 5–8. Available on VHS or DVD, and digitally (contact AIT Sales for more information).

The Voyageur Experience in Global Geography is a comprehensive survey of important standards-based social studies concepts within a compelling case-study style format. Students in grades 9–12 will explore complex economic, social, and cultural issues while they watch diverse examples of social studies in action. The programs model an investigative approach to physical and social geography, following North American students on tour to foreign lands. Each of the ten 25-minute programs features a case study of a specific geographic area with queries posed to the audience and several opportunities for extensions of learning in the classroom. For more information and to view a video clip, visit the Voyageur Experience Web page. Special prices are available to customers in Missouri, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Quebec. Please call AIT Customer Service at 800-457-4509 for more information. Audio description is available upon request. Available on VHS or DVD, and digitally (contact AIT Sales for more information).

Find out more about AIT’s programs at our online catalog. Check out AIT’s sample video clips.

You can also download a .pdf version of AIT’s product catalog.

Read previous issues of the TECHNOS e-Zine.

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