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Educational Design & Technology

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Learning Technology Grant Program Overview: Community District 27

Award Years: 2021-2024

FlippedTIPS in District 27

Community District 27 (a 2020 designated Targeted District based on accountability status from New York State Ed.) is the largest geographic district in Queens, New York, encompassing neighborhoods such as Woodhaven, Ozone Park, South Ozone Park, Richmond Hill, Jamaica, Howard Beach, Breezy Point, Belle Harbor, Far Rockaway and the Rockaway Peninsula. Our students in Far Rockaway have been historically under-represented and are considered at-risk as measured by socioeconomic indicators (e.g. free and reduced lunch percentage) and have been underserved in terms of not having adequate access to WiFi, Internet and libraries. District 27 is focused on servicing youth and families impacted by at-risk circumstances.

Forty-nine schools are part of District 27. District 27’s total K-12 enrollment is 40,675 (90% are non-white minorities) and the student population has large percentages of English Language Learners (11%), students with disabilities (20%), and economically disadvantaged students (77%). These schools are in areas of high unemployment and low achievement, as evidenced by the designation of JHS 226 and the Academy of Medical Technologies as Targeted Support and Improvement Schools (TSI).

These schools have technology needs that are linked to the severe decline in the socio-economic conditions of the area. The socio-economic distress in NYC results from a restructuring of the City's economy from manufacturing to information exchange, finance, and administration. Manufacturing jobs have been declining and the new jobs place a premium on technology skills which a large proportion of our graduates have not acquired. The District also encompasses neighborhoods still recovering from Superstorm Sandy. The diverse district is home to many new immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Pakistan and India. Approximately 16.9% of the students have Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) and receive the full continuum of special education services including Special Education Teacher Support Services (SETSS), Integrated Co-Teaching (lCT) classes and other models of integrated inclusion classes, instruction in self-contained classes, and related services such as speech and language, counseling, and adaptive physical education. Likewise, while our teachers may be skilled in using PC’s and portable devices for their personal use, they lack technology integration skills needed to align curricula with New York State Next Generation Standards/Common Core Learning Standards.

Program description

By adopting this PD model to address the schools’ curricula and library media needs, the 75 content teachers and Library Media Specialists will achieve four objectives:

  1. Teachers will demonstrate problem-based learning by guiding their students in the identification, analysis, and solving of a curriculum or community social problem.
  2. Teachers will develop an original, interdisciplinary, PPA based hyperdoc, which is an online inquiry-oriented activity, for their students.
  3. Teachers will design and develop a web-based presentation for their students
  4. Teachers will create an original screencast and interactive video to be used in “flipping” one of their lessons.

There are also two student objectives:Students will…​

  1. Show significant gains in meeting the technology standards as outlined in the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), Standards for Students
  2. Meet the New York State Next Generation Standards/Common Core Learning Standards through their completion of the online PPA lessons created by their teachers.

The FlippedTIPS program will provide three to six days (18 hours) of professional development, online activities, independent time for each teacher to develop technology products aligned to state standards, and follow-up technical assistance from the Directors (professional development providers). At these PD workshops, teachers will be introduced to the educational philosophies of blended learning/flipped teaching as well as the Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition (SAMR) and Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) models of technology integration. Teachers will develop lessons using Open educational resources to meet the New York State Next Generation Standards/Common Core Learning Standards.

The primary challenges will be to demonstrate to teachers how to adapt, using the PPA model, a topic in their existing curriculum to which they will leverage technology to provide students with a problem-solving approach.

Contact information