Facilitate Communication, Connectivity and Collaboration
The following success stories, case studies, research, and evaluation reports support this vision statement.
The Utah Education Network reaches more teachers faster with professional-quality training and support.
K-12 Education - Case Study
Produced by Adobe, Inc.
Utah established the Utah Education Network as a state-wide initiative with the goal of providing training and technical assistance to the more than 22,000 K-12 teachers in the state's public schools. While the network did help educators in Utah, it was not optimally efficient and cost-effective. The UEN began using Adobe Connect and Captivate to help streamline teachers' websites, correspondence, and training. The network now allows teachers to easily communicate and engage in professional training regardless of computer literacy and comfort levels. Read more
Georgia State University contributes a powerful building block to a supercomputing grid.
Postsecondary - Case Study
Produced by IBM Corporation
Georgia State University is a research university with an enrollment over 50,000 located in urban Atlanta, Georgia. As part of the Southeastern Universities Research Association (SURA), the university helped develop a shared computing grid called SURAgrid for research. Part of their support to the program was the deployment of a powerful computing system using IBM cluster nodes and storage systems. With this new system, Georgia State University has been able to donate more processing power and help their researchers by providing faster computing, safe data backup, and quick data retrieval. Read more
Information Technology's Impact on School-Parents and Parents-Student Interrelations: A Case Study
K-12 - Case Study
By Telem M., Pinto S. Computers & Education 47(3). 2006.
This paper examines the impact of a school management information system on the way in which parents interact with a school and their children by measuring student learning, behavior, and attendance (LBA). The study tracks students in a vocational high school in a mainstream socioeconomic neighborhood over the course of one year. The results indicate that parental interactions with school personnel increased and student behavior changed noticeably especially among those with LBA problems. The paper's results add the information technology dimension to parents' involvement in school research, a dimension neglected to date. Read more
An Evaluation of a Class Web site (CWS) Tool to Increase Parental Involvement in Student Academic Life
K-12 - Research
Produced by Teachers College, Columbia University.
Conducted by V.Aluise. 2006
This study examined scenarios under which Class Web Sites (CWS) can positively impact parental involvement. The study surveyed a subset of PreK-12 teacher-users and parent-users of the CWS tool in all 50 states plus Canada and Puerto Rico. Teacher respondents were from public, private, and parochial schools with heaviest concentrations in grades PreK-8. Parents across grade levels found most helpful the teacher postings related to homework, and most parents reported increased awareness and involvement as a result of their CWS use. Teacher reports varied regarding the CWS tool's effectiveness in facilitating parent-teacher communication and increasing parental awareness and involvement. Overall there is evidence that the tool best supports parental involvement for grade 4-8 parents and teachers. Read more
On-line tutoring for Math Achievement Testing: A Controlled Evaluation
K-12 - Research
Journal of Interactive Online Learning, Volume 6, Number 1.
Conducted by C.Beal, R.Walles, I.Arroyo, and B.Woolf. 2007.
This study reports the results of a control group study of an interactive on-line math tutoring system for high school. High school students completed a math pre-test and were then assigned by teachers to receive interactive on-line multimedia tutoring or their regular classroom instruction. The on-line tutored students improved on the post-test on the problems involving skills tutored in the on-line system (within-group control). Control group students showed no improvement. Students' use of interactive multimedia hints predicted pre- to post-test improvement, and students with weakest initial math skills benefited the most from tutoring. Read more
Computer-Mediated Peer-to-Peer Mentoring
Postsecondary - Research
Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education Journal, Volume 14 (2).
Conducted by F.Cavallaro and K.Tan. 2006.
This pilot study examined an online collaborative writing project carried out between writing classes from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and Singapore Polytechnic (SP). The pilot tested a peer-to-peer mentoring system's success in establishing asynchronous and synchronous communication. The results from this pilot study were very promising and show that students were extremely motivated and produced high quality work. The authors conclude that well planned and implemented mentoring projects are possible through the electronic medium and can be quite effective. Read more
