The Orange County (FL) Acceleration Academy is a high profile high school of about 500 students. In late 2010/early 2011, the school administration team for the Academy had a goal: to create a more data-driven classroom environment for each teacher, by incorporating the use of technology already in place within the school. In this instance, that meant better utilization of the interactive whiteboards for learning.
Better use of the whiteboards would help provide teachers with the ability to consistently monitor student progress throughout the school year, by bringing into the classroom a daily assessment activity and RTI opportunities for use by teachers.
To meet these goals, the school worked with The LearningStation team to install and operate the Insight School platform for all teachers and administrators within the school. Early trainings with teachers went great, and after additional practice, another program to assess professional development for teachers was implemented to increase proficiency in the use of the Insight platform, as well as assessment tools in general.
The new classroom technology benefits teachers at the Acceleration Academy in several ways:
- Teachers are using Insight to integrate textbook and end of course exams with their learner response devices.
- Teachers are also using Insight to deliver bell work to their class – students are logging into their Insight account and answering questions set up as a daily assignment.
- Lead teachers are building their own question banks inside of the Insight Platform in order to create custom assessments.
- Teachers at the Acceleration Academy are printing out their Test Reports from the Insight Assessment Platform for their data notebooks (data notebooks are required in the district). Teachers in each department collaborate during their bi-monthly meetings to discuss the contents of these data notebooks.
- School administrators have created and delivered school-wide benchmark assessments in preparation for the FCAT test every April.
- The administration team is using FCAT practice tests using content taken directly from the Florida Department of Education website and delivering these FCAT practice tests through the Insight Platform.
Read here about technical systems integration projects in the K-12 education sector or click over to our blog to find out more how CCS is changing the ways classrooms use Smartboard technology.
