St. John technology coordinators instruct other educators

Published 12:00 am Wednesday, January 5, 2011

BATON ROUGE – The state’s leading association for the promotion of technology in education recently invited administrators from St. John the Baptist Parish Schools to present at their state conference. The St. John administrators shared how they have enhanced the quality of education in the district by using cutting edge technology to improve their observations of classroom teachers.

Bonnie Dinvaut-Irving, coordinator of educational technology, and Shayla Guidry, master technology teacher, presented the workshop “Goodnight Paper…Good Morning iPad!” to nearly 200 educators attending the 2010 Louisiana Association of Comp–

uter Using Educators State Conference in Baton Rouge.

They demonstrated how school administrators in St. John the Baptist Parish Schools are using a hand-held device, such as an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch, to more efficiently record their observations of daily classroom instruction throughout the district. By using an online form application, school administrators and master teachers can quickly post comments and recommendations and return those to the teachers by the end of the work day. The previous paper form process took much longer, delaying the implementation of recommended improvement and increasing the cost of the observation program.

Courtney P. Millet, St. John the Baptist Superintendent, said the district has invested much time and resources into observing teachers as they instruct students and lead them in learning activities in order to ensure that students are getting the level of instruction they need to be academically successful.

“We know that a good teacher is the most powerful resource we can give our students. That’s why we’ve been very diligent to invest in professional development and then follow up with classroom observations,” Millet said. “We are very pleased that our efforts in teacher observations have been recognized by educators throughout the state and that our efforts are being presented as a model for others to follow,” she continued.

Millet noted that St. John the Baptist Parish Schools completes 100 to 200 classroom observations per week. “The observations give important feedback to our teachers. The observers let our teachers know what they’re doing well and where they can continue to improve. The sooner we can turn around this information and get it back to the teachers, the sooner they can begin making the adjustments and improving their classroom instruction so our students can advance their learning,” she said.

Dinvaut-Irving said the district is using the Pronto Form application to automate, mobilize and manage its on-line forms and data that is used in the classroom observation process.

“By converting the observation forms into easy-to-use electronic forms that we can access through our iPad devices, our personnel can follow the prescribed guidelines, validate the information instantly, enter the data into the district’s system directly, and utilize the results immediately,” she said. “It has minimized disruptions in the process and improved productivity greatly.”

During her presentation, Dinvaut-Irving walked through the crowd of listeners with her iPad to show the “real-time” use of the program while Guidry demonstrated the

program on her iPhone. They also provided participants with a web link to the district website, giving them access to sample forms.