Each day, more than 25,000 students log onto the district's new Internet system known as Grapevine. It links students with teachers, and teachers with parents. Other students "meet" online for group projects or participate in virtual study halls through a related networking site called Edmodo. These are among the new tools Lodi Unified School District is using to engage students in learning.
"You can see that our school is a very high-tech school," Christa McAuliffe Middle School eighth-grader Cyndy Hong Nguyen said in an e-mail sent through Grapevine.
"In our school we like to use computers and laptops as a faster way of communicating, sharing ideas and talking to each other when we are on (school) break. We communicate by grapevine Gmail accounts and sometimes we also communicate by Edmodo, a website where students of the same class or same period can talk and ask about school problems and homework."
School board members recently heard a report from Assistant Superintendent Art Hand on ways the district is improving student achievement through the use of technology.
At the Oct. 26 study session, trustees participated in interactive demonstrations with students from Live Oak Elementary, Lodi High and Christa McAuliffe Middle schools. Following the report, the board directed staff to move forward with forming a broad-based committee, seeking stakeholders from the community, teachers, students and staff.
One teacher referred to it as an extreme technology makeover. While technology is used in the classroom, it is not currently integrated into the mainstream district curriculum like Snider and other teachers have been doing.
The goal is to allow students access to learning anytime, any place — and ultimately to raise student achievement.
Trustee Calvin Young has had Snider's ear for months. He and fellow trustee Bonnie Cassel have met informally with other potential stakeholders.
"It's important because now, especially as we look at our fiscal challenges, we have to be more cost-effective in how we deliver our educational services. More importantly, we have to deliver educational materials differently," Young said, adding that students receive information differently than 20 or even 10 years ago.
"They're much more tech-savvy. We have to deliver it in a medium that they can absorb better and engage them in the classroom and after classroom time."
Hand, too, said it is important to deliver education in a format familiar to the digital native generation now in school. School-age children have never known life without the Internet or cell phones.
"We have seen examples of technology innovations that include the use of iPods, iPads, notebook computers and advanced SMARTBoard technology used by school districts around the nation," Hand said of popular technology gadgets.
"Our goal is to create an approach to education that integrates technology into curriculum delivery in ways that we have not done before," Hand said. "We have only begun to see what might be available to us in the future."
Google docs, Edmodo
Grapevine is an Internet-based cloud computing domain powered by Google Apps. Once logged on, users can share resources, software and information.
"This means that students and educators can engage in learning anytime, anywhere," said Martha Snider, who teaches social students at Christa McAuliffe Middle School.
Once logged onto a computer, a student goes to the grapevine.lodiusd.org portal site and logs onto the district-assigned user account.
Besides an online document creation portion, students and educators can create websites and view curriculum video clips, according to Snider, who regularly uses Grapevine as a teaching tool.
The grapevine.lodiusd.org portal provides the environment for students to build "personal learning networks" that will serve them from kindergarten through high school graduation and beyond. Inside a student's account will be a higher education work portfolio, learning contacts and resources.
It also has a calendar feature allowing students to organize day-to-day events and separate sections to create and control personal websites.
Grapevine, however, is secure for students as outsiders cannot log into it or send communication through it.
Snider's students use Edmodo daily, even during last month's two-week break when they told each other about their time apart. "I sent posts from Hawaii," the teacher said.
"A student who has moved to the Philippines is alive and well; Edmodo has made his transition smoother by being able to stay in touch with his 'short' lifelong friends and former teachers."
Snider's students also use a program called "Google docs" that enables them to do assignments on the go. In the past, assignments started at school would have to be saved on a flash drive and taken home or to another computer for completion.
Students have said not only can that be time-consuming, but not everyone has a flash or thumb drive. Plus, Snider said, those portable drives did not always work within the school network. And, sometimes, the use of USB drives brought in viruses and caused other problems for the districts.
"For students, too many times, the files were not compatible and unnecessarily caused late work. More horrible for students was when their work was lost on our network. All of these issues have been greatly diminished, if not eliminated, by the Grapevine," she added.
"As you can see, this is very helpful for students, and this should be used at schools everywhere," eighth-grader Carlissa Shipp said.
Using this system, Matthew Pruitt, also in Snider's eighth-grade pre-advanced placement history class, was recently able to communicate online with his peers on a group project on American history using the Edmodo program.
"We were able to collaborate with each other on the whole project when each had a different section, and could have done it either on paper or on the computer," he said.
"Since we could collaborate through Google docs, we had uniform style, format and substance. We were able to instantly correct grammatical and spelling errors."
In the past, he has also created class presentations at home before sending them via the Internet to the classroom for fellow students.
C'Andrel Smith, too, has used Grapevine to create Google docs and, if necessary, to watch educational videos that others have uploaded. He believes the new Internet system allows students to be faster and more efficient by completing their assignments electronically.
Eighth-grade student Taylor Misa said that because of Grapevine, she doesn't need to worry if she starts a long assignment in class and can't finish. "Once I get home, I can get on my laptop and sign in to Grapevine again and finish it," she said, adding that she is also glad to have access to Edmodo.
"This website lets me talk to other students in my classes if I do not understand a question or I am currently unable to attend school that day. So I can ask people that are in my classes what we had to do for homework. It also is a great tool to use to enrich my studying habits."
Snider, among the first of the district's teachers to use Internet-related tools to teach, also uses her laptop to communicate from school board meetings with students sitting at home on their computers.
Not only can she post messages to be viewed later, but she can interact with students online at the same time. It is also used during school hours. Unlike similar sites where participates post comments, with this, the teacher is in total control of who participates and when.
She also held the first online study hall in September.
"Parents like it because there's a teacher watching for mischief, unlike MySpace and Facebook. Moreover, the grown-ups like knowing that the homework is getting done while the student is online," she said.
She is planning further online study halls to prepare for tests and check on projects.
"Mrs. Snider moderates the study halls so that the students stay on-subject," Pruitt said, adding that the teacher's after-hours accessibility is also useful when questions arise while working on out-of-class assignments.
Seeing things differently
Live Oak Elementary fourth-grade teacher Sonja Renhult's students are working more with hardware.
To conduct daily lessons, she uses a SMARTBoard and Sentio response system, an on-desk clicker that allows students to answer questions.
"They know right away after I stop the assessment what their grade is. They want to do better because they know what they need to work on," she said, adding that she also never needs to grade another paper herself. "The computer does it for me."
In her second year of using the Internet for schoolwork, Snider has already seen the results. "Grapevine and Edmodo have our students engaged far beyond the traditional school day. This engagement translates into higher test scores in all subject areas," she said.
The teacher attended a summer conference where she learned of Edmodo. She introduced the program to fellow teaching staff at Christa McAuliffe the day before school started. By mid-September, Jorge Benuto and David Taylor trained staff on using the site's library, calendar and assignment features, she said, adding that several teachers have joined her in doing online study halls one or two evenings a week.
The sharing websites can also be used for teacher collaboration to share information quickly.
SMARTBoards already installed in a number of district classrooms at Title 1 schools are similar to white boards, but are interactive. Lessons are projected onto them to allow both the teacher and the students to write on them, and like computers, they also store the lessons.
Renhult admits she's spoiled by the technological gadgets she started integrating this time last school year. "I could certainly teach without technology, but it would be like starting the day without coffee."
She said her students get excited about the lesson because if they know the answer, they want to go up and use the SmartBoard's special markets. "The fact that they can pick their own color thrills them, or the fact that they can write with their finger."
"It basically makes kids excited about what they're learning, and they want to get involved," Renhult.
Young, who said he has always had an interest in technology and doing things differently, said charter schools and other districts are already making substantial inroads in e-learning, also known as distance learning or delivering education virtually.
"We need to be competitive and step up to provide these services to our students to help them learn."
It's also about money. An average new textbook costs $85 to $150, and the district must make available one for every student to use in the classroom and at home — and some are never returned, to the tune of half a million, according to Young.
Online textbooks alone could save money.
Although he was not re-elected, Young has asked to remain involved with the district's progress as a community member. "Just like many things, you need a champion to promote them. I will continue to be a champion in the community, and I know Martha will be in the teaching arena," he said.
"It is a paradigm shift, but one we need to do in order to remain competitive with the charter schools that are out there and improve the learning environment for students.
"If we don't jump on this bandwagon, we're going to fall behind. We already are."
Contact reporter Jennifer Bonnett at firstname.lastname@example.org.