Students struggling with school work will be finding more and more resources online thanks to the Eden Prairie School District’s ongoing work with its Classrooms of the Future initiative.
And what does the future look like?

In Sarah Youngberg’s classes, it means students can review (or preview) the day’s lessons online thanks to the use of Jing videos. Youngberg, an EPHS math teacher, spent much of last year creating a trove of instructional videos on how to do sample problems. Now students in her class can visit her site (http://pcast.edenpr.org/groups/algebra2/blog/) and watch short videos that include Youngberg’s narration guiding them through a sample problem. The videos tie together all the technology initiatives that have been coming into play at Eden Prairie, from the interactive whiteboards to the interactive classroom Web sites known as Moodle.

In class, students can also access the videos through use of mini-laptops, or iPod Touches, available to check out.

“Having the laptops/iTouches available allows students to get their questions answered, rather than waiting until I make my way around the room to them,” noted Youngberg, in an e-mail.

In an interview, Youngberg said she’s received a lot of great feedback from the students.

She gave them a survey last year to see if it was worth her time to create the videos, and her students responded in the affirmative. Last summer, Youngberg was trained in how to make the videos, using the Jing program. “That makes it really easy to do,” she said.
The videos come in handy on days when there is a substitute teacher. The videos can be used by all those in the math department and for all math students at EPHS.

“It’s all something that’s very shared,” she said.
The funding for training and technology in the district stems from the technology referendum which passed in 2004, and brings in $4.6 annually for up to 10 years to be used for technology. One million of that a year goes to the Classrooms of the Future work. As the years progress, more teachers are trained to use the tools of the system –interactive whiteboards, classroom Web sites, etc. The next step will be an expansion of online instructional videos such as Youngberg’s.

The goal is to have more and more teachers learn how to do this, said Superintendent Melissa Krull.

“What I like about it is that it makes learning for kids available anytime, anywhere,” Krull said.

The more learning that is available around the clock, the more able students will be to internalize the information in a manner that is meaningful to them, she added.

Not all kids are going to pick up the lesson in the classroom at that moment. Through the instructional videos, students have the opportunity to go back and relearn it at a later time; or pick it up in advance.

The one thing the district needs to build on is to “make more of our courses available online in general,” said Krull.

Krull said some courses are available online through the District 287 program.

“I think that’s an area for us to grow,” she said.

Improving achievement

The bottom line is that anytime those at the district begin to differentiate instruction to meet student needs, they’re building on the one goal the district has “which is to serve all kids,” said Krull.

“This is another way to improve conditions for learning for all kids in the district,” she said.

Youngberg has seen some improvement in her own classroom after she started putting together the videos.

Last year when she created the Moodle page for her students, she was really surprised by how many students would go to the page to check out assignment calendars.

She noted that, for students who might be afraid to ask a question, this gives them an opportunity to watch something until it clicks.

For parents too, the videos provide a resource to help their children with homework.

“I do think that it increases student achievement,” she added.
To test that out last year Youngberg looked at who was watching the videos in her Algebra II class. For chapter two last year, there were no videos made, while in chapter three, they became available. So Youngberg looked at who watched the instructional videos and how their test scores compared between the two chapters.

Of the students that watched them, all but three had an increase in the test score between the two tests. The average increase was 10 percent, she added.

“That’s quite a jump,” she said.

One student saw a score jump of almost 20 percent: That student said the reason for the increase was watching the videos.

“It just really helps with retention,” said Youngberg. “They can watch it however many times they need to and on their own time.”