Looking at a small group of students, hunched over their individual Scholar+ Chromebooks, you may wonder what they are doing?  Is it a History assignment? Is it a project for Science? Perhaps an analysis for the latest assignment in English.  At Perris Lake High School, this small group of students are working on the school newspaper.

The newspaper, Nest Times at Perris Lake, has been using its current format for the past 2 years.  Using Haiku's Wiki Project forum, the students create individual ‘projects’ where they incorporate videos, links, text, and photos to create ‘mini’ Haiku pages on their selected topics.  These pages are then reviewed by the Instructor, and edited, before the pages are copied to the main public page of the Nest Times.

Why go digital you may ask?  Well, in these difficult times, schools, classes, and teachers are always striving for ways to provide opportunities for the students, but still stay within a budget.  Going digital was the obvious answer for Perris Lake High School.  Working closely with the Tech TOSA, the instructor was able to set up the basic structure of the online structure that exists today.  As a teacher new to the district, the instructor had been on a learning curve with her students, and together they have explored many subjects.  Along the way the students have learned to be more comfortable with the possibilities the Chromebook opens to them.  They have learned to discern which websites provide the most current, reliable information, and which sites are best left alone.  They have learned to explain their research to a casual observer and to give details to how it will be applied to their current article/project they are working on.

Students are allowed to pick their own topics, as long as they’re school appropriate.  With a small class ranging from 11 - 25, and with students that stay on campus for only a maximum of two years, it is important to tap into the interests and concerns of these students while they are here.  Their tastes are very eclectic.  The first term projects were done in groups. While it generated positive results, switching to an individual format allowed students to focus more on their topics; it also provided a wider variety of information, topics, and ideas. Students are given the ‘rights’ to look at each other’s projects to generate ideas and to help each other when requested.  Some students, who have been in Journalism in previous terms, are now proficient enough to help educate others.  These students have become leaders within the class.  At times, they have also helped to edit pages for final publication.

Collaboration on story ideas

One topic choice, that is promoted heavily, is what to do following completion of high school.  Many students are using their projects to explore their choices beyond high school.  For some of these students, college is not always their first choice.  Having this opportunity to explore, about their different career possibles, gives students a better understanding about the type of education they will need.  Many have discovered that some form of a college degree is required for advancement in most of their chosen fields.  Also, they sometimes find that their personal interests have job/career aspects they had not known about before they started their research.  Finding these job/career interests can motivate the student and increase their focus on their future.

Feedback from the site has not been set up yet.  Some teachers have been generous with their praise, and their comments have been appreciated!  In the near future, The Nest will be setting up ways to provide more accurate feedback.  We are also looking to, perhaps, take requests on additional topics and materials the readers wish to see in the ‘paper’.  In addition, the Nest has been exploring options to draw more attention to the Newspaper’s site - perhaps a specially designed icon, or a more interesting form to draw attention to the paper when individuals are visiting and perusing the Perris Lake High School home page.  Next steps include establishing a Twitter account, attaching a link to the current Facebook account for PLHS, and to incorporate announcements that students will make daily.  We wish to create a more socially savvy connection for both students and the community. The staff is also planning to learn more about Haiku and investigate new ways to enhance the paper and organize it to become a more fluid site that is easier to navigate.

The team of teachers at Perris Lake High School are always striving for new ways to connect with their students and create an environment that is supportive and nurturing. Their online newspaper is another way to ‘hear’ the voice of the students and give them their own unique voice through written expression.

Students and parents have always struggled with maintaining an effective way to keep on top of daily academic responsibilities. When our students were in elementary school, remaining informed was much easier for parents or guardians. In the younger grades, there is only one teacher to communicate with and therefore, one system of communicating daily homework, upcoming projects, and assessments.  In middle school, the use of a traditional student planner is a mixed bag of results. A planner works well for organized students but other students struggle when they are faced with multiple teachers who often use different systems for organizing their home to school communication. Of course, a traditional planner gets more complicated in high school. In high school, students have up to seven different teachers and in some cases teachers and parents are providing students less structure as they are expecting students to be more responsible and autonomous. The big question: Does the addition of online websites and apps for checking homework, assignments, grades, and attendance make all of this easier or more confusing? In the Perris Union High School District, we believe we have provided teachers, parents, and students with the technology to make this ongoing issue more manageable than ever.

PUHSD is proud of its Scholar+ program. All students are issued a Chromebook and utilize the Haiku Learning Management System (LMS), the Infinite Campus Portal, and Google Apps for Education. These tools allow student and parents to have 24/7 access to assignments, grades, email, and attendance records. Although there is a learning curve for all educational stakeholders (including school personnel), once oriented on these platforms, most people find these advancements easy to use and very convenient. Parents and students are encouraged to think of Haiku as their “educational windshield,” where one can see forward, such as current and upcoming assignments. The Haiku LMS homepage displays a student’s classes and announcements from teachers about important dates and deadlines. In class, students access Haiku and go directly to the teacher’s Haiku page for each period. Once there, students can find the day’s presentation, assignments, quizzes, homework, notes, and other pertinent class information. While at home, students and parents can use Haiku to check for homework and study class materials. This is a proactive way for parents to check what is happening in their students classes and view which homework and class assignments have been assigned. Once again, think of Haiku LMS as the “windshield” since it is used to see what is happening currently and in the near future. PUHSD encourages parents to get their own Haiku accounts (instructions for setup), but a simple temporary workaround is for students and parents to log in at home together.

After you get in through a regular computer, you may also download the Campus Portal app on your smartphone. Our District ID# is: DMTLPK

If Haiku is the “windshield” Infinite Campus is the “rear view mirror.” Infinite Campus (IC) is PUHSD’s official student database. Although Haiku is an important tool for students and parents to keep up with the content of their classes, it is still vital to access the Infinite Campus Portal (IC Portal setup instructions). Parents who need to sign up for IC were given these instructions at recent Back-to-School events. Students were also given these instructions, complete with their activation key on subsequent days. Parents who still need these instructions are encouraged to call their school to have their specific instructions emailed to them. Although most students have already set up their IC accounts, students can get help with the Infinite Campus Portal from their counselors or their site’s technology coach. Families use IC to check for missing assignments, scores on individual assignments, in-progress grades, attendance, and to view and print unofficial transcripts. It is a powerful tool and is also available in a very convenient app for iPhone and Android smartphones.

This is a promising new era that PUHSD has embraced because it believes these improvements in accessing important class and school information will give all students and their families the tools needed to be successful.

Once regarded as expensive and scarce, the well-planned technological implementation at PUHSD in recent years has made resources available and accessible to students with disabilities like never before. As part of the Scholar+ teaching and learning initiative, PUHSD’s 1:1 Chromebook deployment is one such example of getting needed resources in the hands of students for daily use.

There are many teachers at PUHSD who have spent decades supporting students with disabilities who struggled to gain equitable access to the mainstream curriculum. At times, this uphill battle seemed insurmountable. Now, technology brought about by Scholar+ has been helping PUHSD students close this gap, increasing the possibilities for students with disabilities to equally participate in the general curriculum. The reality of students with disabilities at PUHSD having equitable access to learning experiences is one of the desired outcomes for Scholar+. It is great to see desired outcomes become a reality.

Scholar+ has provided accommodations to students with disabilities that were once expensive and rare. For instance, SpeakIt! is a Google Chrome extension that reads selected text using Text-to-Speech technology that has language auto-detection. SpeakIt! can read text in more than 50 languages and can assist students with learning disabilities and visual impairments to read text. Voicenote is also a Google Chrome extension that uses speech recognition software to take spoken words and convert them into typed words on the screen. Students with fine motor impairments who find it difficult to use a standard keyboard or grip a writing utensil can use Voicenote to complete written compositions. A glowing example of this is that recently a teacher sat down with a student who had visual impairments and was struggling with writing and worked to provide resources. After helping the student install Voicenote on the Chromebook, the student went from writing a paragraph in one hour to composing three pages in half the time. The student’s ability to participate in English class was transformed and this would not have been possible without Scholar+.

Video creation can be extremely beneficial to students with autism or those with more severe cognitive disabilities. There are a number of online tools that allow teachers to create cartoons, comics, screencasts, and live-action videos that can be used to create an assortment of helpful teaching and learning resources. These short demonstrative and informative videos can help students learn how to appropriately act in certain social situations, instruct students in an entertaining way about personal hygiene or safety, or reinforce appropriate behavior by depicting expected behavior. Our teachers are now using this technology to improve the lives of students.

Our students with disabilities live in incredible times where access to technology can result in life changing moments. Everyday, more and more of our students with disabilities are taking control of their lives through technology. Scholar+ at PUHSD continues to provide opportunities for students with disabilities to have equitable access to the curriculum and enrich their lives like never before. Technology is the great equalizer that is making all the difference.

Original Author - Princess Choi:

I want to introduce you to my room. Inside my room, I have 36 students at any given time. I build relationships with 180 students everyday in this room. I don't know which ones are part of this data, but our School SARC says 90.6 percent of my students receive free or reduced price lunch. There was a time during my tenure in this school when I thought these students will not be able to compete against other students in this country. There are many reasons I felt that way, but that's not important because now I feel a little different.

History students in the Perris Union High School District can do more than adorn their classroom walls with cool projects and posters. PUHSD students join larger communities of activists, historians, and journalists to make the world a better place. In one class, students learned about serious human rights abuses, chose a topic that resonated with them, and created thought provoking Prezis and Google Slide Presentations that were posted on a Weebly website to educate each other and call for an end to such abuses. Thanks to the Scholar+ program, Chromebooks, and Google Apps for Education, these students collaborated with ease whether they were sitting in groups or were at home extending their learning.

In another project, students used their Chromebooks to learn important communication skills before participating in the nation’s largest collection of personal interviews, known as Storycorps: http://storycorpsu.org/. Students used their Chromebooks to listen to touching interviews done by other students, created their own questions, and practiced interviewing one another. Then, students were invited to interview classroom guests, such as Technology Director Joe Williams.

Finally, the flexibility allowed by the Haiku Learning Management System allowed very quick instructional pivots when historical parallels suddenly present themselves. For example, in February, 2014, World History students were learning about policy of appeasement leading up to World War II. When Russia, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, invaded the Crimean Peninsula, Mr. Ashley was able to use this event comparatively in his class. Students took polls and then were required to create an “Internet Meme” over the event. Some students succeeded in making very creative GIFs illustrating the aggressive behavior.

There is a learning curve for both teachers and students, but it is becoming clear that when wielded correctly, the Chromebook is  mightier than the sword - at least for Scholar+ students.

Original Author - Jedidiah Butler:

Simple enough task;  make the ball land in the basket.

The task had to be simple so that we could get over 2000 students to participate.  We started small, and eventually involved all three of the comprehensive high schools in the Perris Union High School District, with a repeat visit to Perris High School.

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This article is reposted with permission from Mr. Jedidiah Butler, the PUHSD Math Coach Teacher on Special Assignment. The original post can be found on his blog "Math Butler Blog"

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Here's the summary of what happened.

Our STEM specialist Josh and I put together a single-period, hands-on activity that would engage students with mathematical modeling.

Attempt 1

When people think of quadratics, the hands on project that comes to mind seems to be projectile launching and falling.  With that in mind, Josh prepped the activity.

Josh did a first run with this activity in Princess Choi's classroom with Integrated Math 2 students. Ms. Choi has proven herself to be a teacher that takes chances and tries new things if they have promise to support and engage her students .  Without her, this activity would have probably never got past the planning stages.

Materials

The tools given to students  included:

• tape measure
• ping pong ball
• Lego™ NXT Robot kit (made into catapults)

Directions

First, students were shown how to use a catapult.  The catapults were made of expensive plastic, and used a program to launch it. The program was simple but not very intuitive for first time users.

Tasks

1. Launch a ball on the floor and Find the typical distance and maximum height. 
2. Launch off a table and make a basket.

Once the demo was finished, students gathered into groups and started running trials and taking measurements.  While students were running the activity, each group quickly realized that group work and collaboration were required to make this work.  It would take more than 1 student to launch the ball, measure the distance, measure the height, and retrieve the ball.  Some managed with just 3 in the group, but most were more comfortable with 4.
Ms. Choi, Josh, and myself facilitated the groups by asking questions on what they were doing, how well it was working, and if a more effective alternate method was possible.

Teacher: "What are you trying to do here?"
Student: "Measure the distance."
Teacher: "Which distance?"
Student: "The ground, to where it lands, oh and the height too."
Teacher: "So you're getting 2 measurements then?"

Conversations like this were abundant during the activity.  Pushing the students to articulate the process and reasoning to go with it was just as valuable as the typical math content.

Students were also given a worksheet to document their process.  I'd like to add that this worksheet was the first iteration and we improved significantly on it for the second round.

The shot for the basket

Time flew by and the bell crept up too quickly.  Students and facilitators were engaged to a point where time was merely an afterthought.  They saw that math can be more than just numbers. Students leaving didn't want to go and incoming students rushed to class once they  heard about the activity.

Even with this success of engaging the students, there were improvements to be made.  The directions needed simplifying and the supplemental worksheet needed more depth. Word spread quickly about this activity and more teachers and students wanted to try it out.  So we did.  In a really big way.
Our first run had roughly 2-3 total classes with only 1 class at a time.  As interest grew, it looked like we would be doing the event for a full day with up to 3 classes running at the same time.  That was just the first round of follow up with Perris High.  The group was so big that we had to request use of the multi-purpose room for a full day.

We learned from the previous experience that the goal needed to be as simple as possible.  We focused on the second task only:

Make the ball go in the basket

There was a few conditions though.  The students had to launch it from the stage down to the floor and they only got 1 attempt at making the shot.  That's correct, only one shot for the basket.  As some felt immediately put off by a 1 shot deal, we clarified that there was more to it.  The students could have as many attempts as they wanted from the ground.  So practice was key.
Some questioned that shots from the ground were not going to be the same as shots from the platform.  This was the teachable moment.  The learning that an educator wants a student to realize from this experience is what happens when you change the height from which the ball is launched?  Does a projectile travel further, the same, or a shorter distance when launched higher?  It was odd to me that this was not intuitive for the students at first, only adding value and purpose to why we were doing such an activity.

Managing a room, maintaining Focus

The teachers for each of these classes were invaluable in managing a room with 100-120 students. To help keep the students on track with achieving the task of making the ball in the basket, I gave them 2 words to focus on: precise and consistent.

This gave us just enough structure to guide the actions and behaviors of the students as needed.  To be precise, the students needed to be particular with their measuring, not just guessing.  To be consistent, it wasn't enough to just do the practice once or even a few times. These words may be redundant, but for our students it proved as a valuable guide.



Students were given similar tools as before and had to apply some problem solving to figure out how to best use the tools.  For example, each group was only given 1 yard stick, yet they had to measure the height and distance for their trials.

Upgrades

The worksheet was redone to match current standards, incorporate multiple representations of the experience, and extend the understanding to apply the concept in a new situation.

Our district has students working 1:1 with Chromebooks.  To capitalize on that opportunity we had the new worksheet available digitally and an interactive Desmos Graph.  Some used these options while others stuck to their physical resources.  However the students completed the task, they were engaged, happy, and maintained high standards in their work throughout.  They did all of this while learning and applying the math from their class.  All 2000+ of them.


Who knew that shooting a little ball into a little basket could mean so much.

As we finished with the last class during the last period on the last day of the activity, Josh and I were exhausted.  It was enlightening to think how we finished compared to how we started.  The experience of having to scale it up for the masses forced us to look at the core concepts in the exploration.  The evolution of the supplemental material was also honed down to the essentials.  There was enough for the students to develop an understanding of the model through a few different representations, but any unnecessary tasks/prompts were whittled away.  The conversations that students had with peers and with teachers were what made this activity successful.  This activity was more than just practice on paper.  It was ScholarPlus.

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