Creating Instructional Content Leads to Engaged and Empowered Students

The Contra Costa County Office of Education supports over 168,000 students in 18 districts. As part of her work on the district’s Curriculum and Instruction team, Rovina Salinas manages ed1stop and supports the Ed Tech Teacher Cadre.

ed1stop is the Contra Costa County Office of Education’s online portal that provides administrators, teachers, and students with digital resources, tools, and content to help them meet state standards. ed1stop includes subscriptions to numerous educational resources, including Discovery Streaming, Learn360, AP Images, World Book Online, Grolier Online, and Recipes4Success. ed1stop provides online resources to 8 counties, 96 districts, over 400 schools, and serves more than 200,000 students.

The portal also contains a trove of technology-infused model lessons that highlight resources available in ed1stop and demonstrate how those resources can be used to improve student learning. “Currently we have over 200 projects, and thanks to our 8th grade science teachers, we will provide model lessons for the entire 8th Grade Physical Science with projects for every chapter and unit by January of 2013,” says Salinas.

Salinas develops the model lessons using Tech4Learning’s Share software. “I use Share because it does everything I need to create web-based projects,” shares Salinas. “We used to use other tools, but have found Share to be powerful, user-friendly, affordable, and well supported.”

Contra Costa COE has also implemented an Ed Tech Teacher Cadre to help create model lessons and build technology integration expertise across the county. The Cadre was developed the same year CCCOE launched the ed1stop portal as a means to show the benefits of streaming video and demonstrate how teachers can quickly and easily develop lessons that students can use anytime, anywhere.

“ed1stop was developed to provide teachers with the tools and resources to develop and promote engaged student learning using technology, and we wanted the staff development to move beyond just finding online resources that meet standards to developing full-on ready-to-go learning objects. Developing a strong ED Tech Teacher Cadre to facilitate that mission was essential,” explains Salinas.

Participating teachers receive year-round support and training from Salinas. Each cadre member receive copies of Share, ImageBlender, and Frames as their suite of tools to develop meaningful projects for students to use. Some teachers have incorporated Flip video projects, iMovie projects, and used student-generated videos as well.

In turn, participants use these tools to develop model lessons in the areas of Language Arts, Science, Math, and Technology. “This year we have 27 teachers developing projects aligned to California Content Standards, State Adopted Textbooks, and the California Common Core State Standards,” explains Salinas. “Being part of the cadre team not only expanded my experience using computers, it improved my teaching by giving me more lesson options and a focus on student-driven investigation,” shares Jason Miller, a teacher at Pine Valley Middle School in San Ramon.

The Ed Tech Teacher Cadre also helps to change classroom instruction. “My experience building lessons with the cadre has led me to embrace creativity and to be open to different interpretations of a tech-related assignment. This past year I even purchased the Tech4Learning tools for my classes. It's so much fun to watch the students synthesize the programs and possibilities as they get exposed to more and more,” shares Shauna Hawes, Technology Specialist at Valley View Middle School in Pleasant Hill.

Her students are enjoying creating and developing content as well. Students, like Charlie, appreciated being able to “express projects through animations.” Alexus felt that when she used Frames her poetry projects was made “a little more alive.” Students also published work to K12Share to share with parents and as Marissa’s expresses, “thought it was really cool to bring up my school project outside of school!”