Drew Blanchard, Master of Arts in Teaching with Technology (MAT), "K-12 Ed Tech. Support."

http://gradschool.marlboro.edu Capstone project description: "Providing Educational Technology Support and an Online Learning Environment in a Public School Setting." There is an increasing need to integrate technology in public school classrooms and foster an educational environment which incorporates Web 2.0 applications. At the same time, there is a growing divide between staff and students' technical knowledge. The 75 teachers at Winooski City Schools have been frustrated by a lack of professional development and support in educational technology. Due to increasing demands on their time, Winooski Schools' IT department has been unable to provide training which meets teachers' expectations.

This capstone seeks to meet the needs of both the Winooski teachers and their IT department by providing technology training from a professional educator's perspective. This will help teachers understand and integrate technology in their daily lessons. The capstone's client, the Superintendent of Winooski Schools, has asked for the creation of an Educational Technology department to provide teachers with formal professional development in classroom technologies and Web 2.0 applications. Additionally, this department will train Winooski teachers in three new applications: Web2School (a new student/grade book database), Naviance (online portfolios of students' work) and a new interactive website which will integrate these components.




Finally, the capstone's client seeks to address what is regarded as a deficit in Winooski's classrooms: the lack of an online teaching and learning environment. To this end, a Moodle platform and a six week course entitled Moodle Basics have been created and implemented to train the staff in understanding Moodle from both a student's and teacher's perspective. The client expects that at least 30% of staff completing Moodle Basics (and this capstone) will immediately begin using Moodle in their own classrooms. Currently, 30 Winooski teachers are enrolled in Moodle Basics, with a waiting list of 16 additional teachers who will begin a third section of the course in January 2010.

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