In the last edition of Private School News, we featured St. Margaret’s Episcopal School and its work using massive open online courses (MOOCs) to bring its mission to students around the world. As it turns out, St. Margaret’s took advantage of advancements in learning tools long before edX reached out to secure their expertise for their high school courses. Lynn Ozonian, the school’s Director of Innovation and Technology, spared a moment to talk with us about some of the clever ways St. Margaret’s uses technology in their classrooms.
Adopting Learning Management Systems
St. Margaret’s Episcopal School in San Juan Capistrano, California, has been using a learning management system (LMS) for almost 10 years. They first started with the Angel system before moving on to Blackboard. It’s a Web-based LMS that allows teachers to provide resources and coordinate lessons with students, as well as providing a “dropbox” feature for students to submit assignments and comment on class discussion “threads” in forums.
Blackboard is a relatively recent addition to St. Margaret's toolbox of educational resources, and it’s certainly one with which many experienced teachers had not been trained during their formal education. Lynn says that integrating an LMS into St. Margaret’s curriculum required a professional development process for the entire faculty that took years to refine and grow.
With Angel (and later Blackboard), a group of “early adopters” used the system in their classrooms as pilots. They were tasked with working out the kinks and discovering how the LMS would enhance their students’ learning experience—as opposed to using a feature merely because it’s there. Working as a team with Lynn and each other, these early adopters shaped techniques and tricks for the rest of the school to use.
For the rest of the teachers, adoption happened in small steps. That first year, they were only asked to upload their classes’ syllabi onto the system for students to access. Slowly, as professional development progressed and they could see the advantages the LMS gave to their early adopting peers, more and more teachers integrated the system into their everyday classes until everyone was fully on board.
Instant Feedback and Other Innovations
The sheer quantity of data edX had collected for its MOOCs was astounding to Dr. Jeneen Graham, St. Margaret’s Academic Dean. Teachers usually have classroom surveys and feedback, of course, but that’s only a few times a year. By having courses online, edX was able to get instantaneous feedback on how students were absorbing materials, which is more immediately helpful for teachers during everyday lessons.
Lynn told us that St. Margaret’s was working on a similar instant feedback system in their brick-and-mortar classrooms using iPads students bring to class. (St. Margaret’s is a BYOD school.) Teachers can lecture for a few minutes before “surveying” the class with questions via a specialized learning application. Based on classroom responses, a teacher can determine that the students have absorbed the crucial information and continue on, or—if answers are less than favorable—realize that a particular section must be covered again or differently.
This system is currently with the school’s “early adopters,” but Lynn says that the feedback she’s been getting from both teachers and students is positive. Students like it because it makes the class more interactive, and teachers like the instant gauge of comprehension enabled by the process.
That’s not to say that Lynn and her cohorts have forgotten about St. Margaret’s new MOOC initiative. On the contrary, she’s working hard with the teachers to develop different methods of video capture and delivery to ensure that the videos produced are as engaging as possible for the plethora of students expected this spring.
For example, she’s working with Marta Austin, the teacher of St. Margaret’s “Advanced Spanish Language and Culture” MOOC, to develop a conversational give-and-take that’s important in all language classrooms. In an effort to encourage discussion both online and verbally, they’ve developed a plan to have the Spanish teachers discuss a current event in Spanish and film themselves doing so.
Then, the discussion will be uploaded to the MOOC site to be watched by the students to jump-start their own discussion. Students will be asked to record themselves making similar responses to upload to the site, so that the teacher can critique their efforts to ensure both written and spoken Spanish is excellent.
Technology, if integrated properly in the classroom, can be used quite successfully. Besides, as Lynn told us, students will be using these sorts of tools both in college and the “real world,” so it’s up to schools to train them in appropriate use before they get there. They can use these applications in the classroom, sure, but they’ll also be able to apply them to the greater world beyond.
Additional ISM resources:
Research: The Place of Virtual, Pedagogic, and Physical Space in the 21st Century Classroom
ISM Monthly Update for School Heads Vol. 9 No. 6 1:1 Laptops in the Classroom—Where Are We Now?
Private School News Vol. 13 No. 10 School Spotlight: St. Margaret's Lives its Mission Through edX MOOCs
Additional ISM resources for Gold Consortium members:
I&P Vol. 35 No. 3 The 21st Century School: Curriculum and Technology
I&P Vol. 27 No. 16 Keep Ergonomics in Mind When Integrating Classroom Technology
I&P Vol. 26 No. 7 Technology and Student Achievement: Implications of the 'West Virginia Story'
