Mobile Corps

Mobile Corps

Closing the achievement gap by keeping pace with mobile caseloads

Strategy

Bringing mobile educational technology to the students who present academic achievement gaps in critical areas of mathematics and literacy via national service educators.

Mission of City of Lakes: AmeriCorps

The mission of the City of Lakes AmeriCorps program is to help ensure all our children succeed both socially and academically regardless of race,

culture, ethnicity, native language, gender, poverty level, disability, or any other status.

Because there are multiple causes for the Achievement Gap, and as our children have unique needs and talents, we need to have

multiple strategies for closing this gap.

We must meet not only the academic needs of these students, but we must also provide them with the developmental assets necessary

to be successful.

Mission of City of Lakes: AmeriCorps

The goals of the City of Lakes program are:

Improve academic successDevelop leadership skills

Increase youth assets

We will meet these goals by combining the following five strategies:

Provide intensive academic support through 1:1 and small-group tutoring

Foster leadership development through service-learning programs

Develop social skills through out-of-school-time programming

Improve self esteem through formal mentoring

Link caring older adults and positive adult role models to at-risk students through volunteer recruitment and coordination

The Problem

Students are presented with very repetitive ways of learning. Industry and globalization demand that education take a more flexible way of looking at how education is delivered.

The AmeriCorps tutor has the general strategies used in education at their disposal, though sometimes this is not enough to engage the struggling student. This is where the unique capabilities of mobile technology allow us to engage the struggling student on an unrealized level.

Extra Benefits

A major obstacle to accurate and detailed data about a student’s academic progress is due to the fact that City of Lakes AmeriCorps members face is very limited internet access due to a combination of factors including; limited computers at their primary site.

This limited access effects their respective student caseloads due to the fact that they are not ale to input accurate and timely data about the student's progress

Lack of team/supervisor collaborative communication to address needs within the context of student caseloads.

Extra Benefits

They are additional issues that can be addressed by mobile technology;

-Lack of access to pre-established academic databases that have tracked the student's real, not perceived literacy and math gaps.

-Lack of access to national databases of tutoring strategies and mobile applications specifically developed for education.

This limited access effects their respective team projects within the community:

-Lack of real-time member/supervisor collaborative communication for needs within the context of community and civic engagement projects.

Recording The Achievement Gap

The caseloads achievement gaps are closed through effective instruction and tutoring.

Effective tutoring and instruction can only take place when a record of critical academic needs can be recorded for future instruction planning.This is usually minutia in a teacher's day and can easily be forgotten by even individual tutor's by the time they are able to access student academic tracking databases.

To enable real-time recoding via Q-PID/On-Corps of student progress during tutoring sessions.Thus allowing a real-time picture that provides in-depth detail for teachers and administrators on the progress of targeted students who present an achievement gap.

Mobile Caseload=Mobile Corps

Overarching Goal I

To provide a 3G, MPLS, and or MPLS school district wireless network enabled ipod touch for ten COL: AmeriCorps members and program staff.


Overarching Goal II

To provide a plethora of educational tools and applications via open sources such as;

iTunes, Android, and Google Labs for utilization in personalized tutoring sessions.

This toolkit of tutoring applications will be available to the Corps to accelerate the closure of the student's achievement gap.


Overarching Goal III

To make the City of Lakes AmeriCorps a national model for the integration of mobile technology during targeted math and literacy tutoring that is sometimes sporadic in scheduling.

To enhance the Corps ability to multi-task, communicate effectively in real-time, collaborate on service projects, and facilitate civic engagement projects more effectively.


Overarching Goal IV

Staff and Site Supervisors can provide real-time scheduling and planning of civic engagement, after-school, training, and a host of other activities through the use of iCal and the additional purchase of a "Mobile Me" or "Google Sync" Account.

This would provide real-time alarms and reminders for members and staff.

It also would provide a collaborative calendar that could be accessed by supervisors and members alike with varying degrees of privileges.

Partnerships

COL AmeriCorps is partnering with America Learns to develop our winning tutoring strategies into mobile applications.

These applications will become open-sourced(free) on iTunes for download by educators and the general public.

Partnerships

COL AmeriCorps will be partnering with the University of Minnesota Education Graduate Studies Department to conceptualize and track quantitative results of this forward-thinking pilot program.

Why?

To provide opportunities for members and staff to communicate in real-time. Through applications such as SMS(text messaging) facebook, twitter, real-time email.

To provide real-time collaboration on community service projects logistics, planning, and operations for successful outcomes.

To provide real-time text messaging or SMS for large school events, bus duties, after school, medical emergencies, locked out of rooms, GPS for field trips, Google Maps for Civic Engagement Projects such as "Holiday Basket", the list goes on...

Why?

To provide real-time access to America Learns, a national database for proven tutoring strategies which Gary Kosman is molding around mobile technology.

Also to provide access to an unlimited number of books to be read to or by the student through Google Reader or "The Classics".

To provide access to unlimited amounts of research material for students and members alike for projects. This can be secured through EBSCO Host/Online Public Libraries/Google Scholar

Why?

The purchase of a mobile me account also allows for a system wide data back-up option for any

Student tutoring goal data tracking

Corps member development of new tutoring strategies

Corps email/photos/address contacts/calendar dates

OCR and Caseload at Fingertips

A raw infrastructure of a pilot caseload's OCR has been built into an email file and having access to it as needed during and before tutoring sessions.

A student’s OCR file is a comprehensive snapshot of all the metrics utilized by teachers and administrators to determine a students on-going success. The AmeriCorps member is privy to this information and can save it to a mobile file on their iTouch to be accessed in real-time with the student to build and focus tutoring sessions. The importance of this data being accessible to the AmeriCorps member cannot be overstated!

It has also been utilized to form a more effective tutoring strategy and infrastructure for each individual student educational needs in the pilot caseload.

My Experience

This is an example of how detailed a tutor can be with data input if they have a mobile data device such as the iTouch

10.15a. - 11:15a Scott Foresman Investigations Curriculum:

-I assisted one of my students with division recognition. He utilized my iPhone "My First Math" and "Flash Math" he struggled with division in the hundreds so I brought the level down to single and ten digit numbers. He began succeeding quickly. We then hands-on division. He was successful in his understanding and was able to show and verbally reiterate the concept of division. He had difficulty with the problems; 9/3=3 and 6/2=3.

My Experience

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My Experience

In the last video I portrayed the use of the app “Spelling Bee” this app was looked upon as a game by my caseload. They would spend hours working through spelling exercises, one student in particular had a wide literacy gap, so much so, that three letter words were difficult for her to spell.

After utilizing the “Spelling Bee” app consistently three and four letter words became much easier for her.

NCLB Stand./Amer. Lrns./OnCorps

Shortcuts to state educational standards, district curriculum, and proven educational organizations websites at the tutor's fingertips.

Math and Science

This is a sample of some of the educational applications I utilize for K-5.

The applications are flexible enough to assist tutoring up to the college level.

Literacy

This is a sample of some of the educational applications I utilize for K-5.

The applications are flexible enough to assist tutoring up to the college level.

When, Where, Who

This program will be a pilot program that will consist of at least ten COL Americorps members and their respective supervisors during the FY 2009-10.

We will track and quantify these ten member's caseloads within the range of fifty percent.

An evolving research plan can be viewed here:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AU_MtyvpmEf3ZHQ4cjUzdF8zM2Q4MnYzd3Zn&hl=en

iTouch Cost Logistics

03/15/09 Recession Retail Price: 229.00

Bulk Pricing: MPLS School District Apple Ed. Account

Education Discount: MPLS School District Apple Ed. Account

Average loss/destruction of iTouch by employees: These ten ipods will become replacement for a hopefully expanded program 2010-11

iTouch Risk Management Logisitcs

1. iTouch home and work utilization procedures

2. iTouch kept upon program exit/graduation

3. iTouch secure storage program

4. iTouch disbursement program: liabilities and responsibilities

5. If member exits early will return the ipod or will have 230 dollars deducted from the last paycheck.