EETT Technical Assistance for 2009-2010

Abstract

This project will provide the following five deliverables to be funded directly from the project budget:

This project will also provide the supervisory personnel and infrastructure to develop, implement, and support the following separately-funded activities:

Performance Measures

Performance measure 1: Teaching and Learning Institutes will be conducted in summer 2009.
Baseline: Eight Institutes conducted in summer 2008.
Expectation: Due to district funding and travel cuts, only six institutes are expected to be conducted in summer 2009.
Status: Expectation exceeded. Eight institutes were conducted in summer 2009.
  • Gainesville, 6/15/09–6/18/09
  • Gulf, 6/15/09–6/18/09
  • Lakeland, 6/22/09–6/25/09
  • Okaloosa, 7/14/09–7/17/09
  • Orlando, 7/21/09–7/24/09
  • Lee, 7/27/09–7/30/09
  • Putnam, 8/04/09–8/07/09
  • Tampa, 8/04/09–8/07/09
Performance measure 2: Institute print materials will be upgraded in response to last year's research findings, participant reviews, and expert advice.
Baseline: Print materials produced for summer 2008 Institutes
Expectation: Print materials revised and expanded in particular to include specific curriculum connections in each section.
Satus: Expectation met. All print materials for Institutes were completely revised for participants and included curriculum connections.

Performance measure 3: MDE professional development opportunities will be offered throughout the project period.
Baseline: Currently, we conduct monthly Adobe Connect sessions for MDE PD and house nine Moodle modules including four for MDE partners, three for the Moodler User Group, and one each for Student Voices and Moodle Training.
Expectation: Continue to conduct monthly Adobe Connect sessions by region for MDEs and create ten new training modules to be posted in Moodle for a total of 19. The new modules will include the following titles:
  • Innovation, creativity, and technology
  • Web 2.0 tools
  • Web 2.0 social and collaborative tagging
  • Concept mapping
  • Copyright
  • Global projects
  • Challenge-based learning
  • Instructional design models
  • Asset review
  • Adult learners
  • Vocabulary of tech terms
Status: On track for completion by end of project period.
  • Web 2.0 tools - Development Phase
  • Copyright - Review and Final Editing Phase
  • Global projects - Design Phase
  • Instructional design models - Design and Development Phase
  • Asset review - Development and Review Phase
Performance measure 4: Twenty additional best practice videos will be added to the No Strings Attached website in addition to the current 147 videos and the anticipated 25 videos produced as a part of the Technology Integration Matrix grant.
Baseline: Total of 172 videos on No Strings Attached website.
Expectation: Total of 192 videos on No Strings Attached website.
Status: In planning stages only. It was not practical to videotape during the 2009 summer quarter as summer school was cancelled in most districts.

Performance measure 5: CoSN memberships will provide essential support to district technology leaders.
Baseline: Only some districts currently hold CoSN membership.
Expectation: CoSN membership purchased for all 67 districts.
Status: Expectation met. Membership for all districts through 2010 has been purchased. CoSN webinars have already been offered in addition to the chapter setup meetings and calls.

Performance measure 6: For 2007-08, the last year that a similar EETT Technical Assistance project was funded, we provided 90 documented support instances including institutes, workshops, distance, and face-to-face sessions. (See http:// fcit.usf.edu/reports/EETT_TA_2007-08/index.htm) Given the same staffing as in FY2007-08, we also expect to provide a similar number of support instances, but will attempt to increase the impact by shifting some of the individual face-to-face services to group and/or distance services. The running list of support instances will be maintained on the project website.
Baseline: 90 support instances
Expectation: 90 support instances
Status: The following support instances have been logged:
Performance measure 7: The Readiness Gauge will simplify the FLDOE assessment of district readiness for computer-based and end-of-course testing.
Baseline: Currently the Department must compile data from several different sources that are usually updated only once a year.
Expectation: By September 1, 2009 the Readiness Gauge will be ready for Department use will all of the essential features as described above, thereby allowing a real-time assessment of testing readiness across the state.
Status: Expectation met. Working Readiness Gauge was delivered to FLDOE October 31. During the month of September, additional features were added to streamline the review of district content by the FLDOE. Guidance supplied by the FLDOE was added to the Gauge.

Performance measure 8: The Readiness Gauge will also support districts by clarifying the necessary benchmarks that must be achieved before computer-based testing can be implemented in their districts. The Gauge brings these requirements together in one place, provides an easy method of entering and updating data, and the currency of Department review and status change provides motivation to continue to meet all of the indicators. The Gauge also provides insight to districts that are having trouble meeting a specific benchmark, by allowing them to quickly review how other districts meet the same goal.
Baseline: No single place to bring together district planning for computer-based testing.
Expectation: By September 1, 2009, districts will be able to view their own progress and the progress of other districts in meeting computer-based testing requirements.
Status: Expectation met. Readiness Gauge is in working condition. It allows a district to enter information and request review by FLDOE. Once reviewed by FLDOE, both the status and the back-up detail will be available for review by other districts. Actual launch of site is awaiting further discussion regarding the categories and/or grade levels it should include, and the possibilities of pre-populating some of the fields with existing data. The FCIT programmer is ready to make any requested modifications once these decisions are finalized.

Performance measure 9: The ETC will be maintained to the point that at least 95% of the suggested links will be working at all times. It is impossible to guarantee 100% of links to be working because even the best websites that we would want to reference have intermittent down periods.
Baseline: currently 91% of recommended links are active
Expectation: 95% of recommended links active at all times
Status: Expectation met. As of 9/25/09, 96% of ETC links to external websites were working.

Performance measure 10: At least 2,000 photographs will be added to the Exploring Florida collection. There are currently 4,600 photographs in the collection.
Baseline: 4,600 photographs on Exploring Florida website
Expectation: 6,600 photographs on site by June 30, 2010
Status: On track. Currently 5,422 photographs are available in the collection. As an additional convenience to the user, photos are also available through the new FCIT federated search at https://fcit.usf.edu/search/. The interface allows the user to sort search results by media type (e.g. photograph).

view of search results for photographs of plants

Performance measure 11: At least 5,000 backgrounds will be added to the Presentations ETC website. This is a website that supports students and teachers in the production of quality digital content by providing high quality backgrounds and themes for presentations, websites, and other school projects.
Baseline: 22,000 backgrounds currently on Presentations ETC website
Expectation: 27,000 backgrounds on site by June 30, 2010
Status: Hundreds of photographs and graphic files have been collected in preparation for updating and expanding the Presentations ETC website.

Performance measure 12: The most obvious measure of online dissemination is the number of hits to our webservers. This measure, of course, varies greatly throughout the year reflecting school vacation and testing periods. The cleanest comparison would be to compare the 2008-09 fiscal year with the 2009-10 fiscal year to demonstrate growth in the utilization of online resources. Our expectation is that the year-to-year growth would be significantly in excess of 10%.
Baseline: Total hits to FCIT servers FY2008-09
Expectation: Increase of 10% for FY2009-10
Status: Expectation exceeded. Total hits for third quarter 2008 were 72,908,976. Total hits for third quarter 2009 were 91,571,580, yielding a year-over-year increase of 26% for the quarter. Number of hits for fourth quarter 2009 showed a 22% increase over fourth quarter 2008.

QuarterNumber of HitsQuarterNumber of HitsChange
Jul-Sep 200872,908,976Jul-Sep 200991,571,580+26%
Oct-Dec 200891,940,211Oct-Dec 2009111,960,768+22%
Jan-Mar 2009117,191,674Jan-Mar 2010 
Apr-Jun2009118,521,003Apr-Jun 2010 

Performance measure 13: A second measure of successful online dissemination is the number of websites linking back to one's content as reported by Google. Through intensive marketing of our products, we expect to be able to increase the total number of incoming links by 10% per quarter for the project period. We will use as our benchmark, the number of incoming links as reported in March of 2009 for ten significant resource pages. The following chart webpage and will be updated by quarter.


Site March 2009 June 2009 Sept 2009* Dec 2009* March 2010 June 2010
Clipart ETC homepage 6,477 8,960 6,518 7,704
Clipart ETC sitemap 2,752 2,533 1,088 1,319
ETC homepage 1,246 1,486 267 332
FDE homepage 145 151 62 51
Lit2Go homepage 1,891 2,370 1,380 1,285
Maps ETC homepage 116 178 86 88
No Strings homepage 93 109 61 108
Presentations ETC homepage 266 524 193 215
Tech-EaseMac homepage 203 107 46 40
Tech-Ease Win homepage 208 214 62 50
Actual Total Links 13,397 16,632 9,743 11,192
Target Total Links 13,397 14,737 16,210 17,831 19,615 21,576


Baseline: Incoming links as of March 2009
Expectation: 10% increase per quarter for grant period
Status: Mixed. Second quarter shows a growth of 24% over previous quarter. The third quarter shows a substantial decline in numbers of incoming links as reported by Google Webmaster Tools. This was an unexpected result. Upon a comparison of the complete link download tables from Google we found that Google has apparently changed the way they count incoming links. For example, we found that as of September 25, the 61 incoming links reported by Google Webmaster Tools for No Strings Attached were good. We also found that 53 of the incoming links reported in June, but not appearing on the September report were, in fact, still good links. So the actual total of incoming links for No Strings Attached is September would be 114 if it were reported the way Google Webmaster Tools previously reported links. This would indicate an actual increase of about 5% instead of the apparent decrease of 44%. *Since the process of checking links by hand is very time-consuming, we will continue to report the uncorrected numbers returned by Google Webmaster Tools with the notation that the results beginning with September 2009 are artifically low due to a change in reporting practices.

Performance measure 14: For 2007-08, the last year that a similar EETT Technical Assistance project was funded, we presented at 16 conferences. (See https://fcit.usf.edu/reports/EETT_TA_2007-08/index.htm) Given similar funding levels for staff and travel, we also expect to present and/or exhibit at a similar number of conferences. The running list of conference presentations will be maintained on the project website.
Baseline: Presentations and/or exhibition at 16 conferences
Expectation: Presentations and/or exhibition at 16 conferences
Status: As of October 30, 2009, FCIT staff have presented at 6 conferences:
  1. National Educational Computing Conference
    • Using Captivate for Distance Learning, 6/27/09
    • Digital Photography and Lightroom, 6/28/09
    • HDR Photography, 6/29/09
  2. Administrators' Management Meeting
    • Back to the Future, 9/17/09
    • Back to the Future, 9/18/09
  3. Florida Council for the Social Studies
    • Visualizing Stories: Telling Stories with Photographs and Text, 9/25/09
    • Throw Away the Books: Free Educational Resources from Thinkfinity, 9/26/09
    • Beyond the Music: Educational Uses for iTunes U, 9/26/09
  4. Florida Council for Independent Schools Central Florida
    • Content Management Systems, 9/28/09
    • Social Networking in Education, 9/28/09
  5. Florida Association of Media In Education
    • Booth and Exhibitor 09/30/ 09 - 10/02/09
    • My Thinkfinity, 10/01/09
    • Screencasting, 10/01/09
    • TAG: You've Got It, 10/02/09
    • My Thinkfinity, 10/01/09
    • Beyond the Music: Educational uses for iTunes, 10/01/09
  6. National Dropout Prevention Conference
    • Beyond the Music: Educational uses for iTunes, 10/26/09
    • Experts in your backyard: FDE program overview, 10/26/09
    • Pandemic or Budget: Are your students ready to learn from home?, 10/27/09
  7. Florida Charter School Conference
    • Free Resources for K-12 Teachers: FCIT Digital Assets, 11/17/09
    • Thinkfinity, 11/17/09
    • Professional Development with Moodle, 11/17/09
  8. National Staff Development Conference
    • Florida Digital Educator Program: Beyond the Face to Face, 12/08/09
  9. Florida Educational Technology Conference
    • Captivate your Teachers, 01/13/10
    • Second Life for Professional Development, 01/14/10
    • Pandemic or Budget: Are your students ready to learn from home?, 01/14/10
    • Master Digital Educators: Experts in your Backyard, 01/15/10
    • Second Life for Professional Development, 01/15/10
  10. Florida Council for Independent Schools South Florida
    • Florida Digital Educator Program Overview, 02/03/10
    • Content Management Systems, 02/03/10
    • Social Networking in Education, 02/03/10
  11. Brevard Educational Technology Conference
    • Google Earth, More than a Pretty Globe, 02/15/10
    • Florida Diital Educator Program: Beyond the Face-to-Face, 02/15/10
    • Professional Development with MOODLE, 02/15/10
    • Digital Story Telling with Images, 02/15/10
    • Florida on iTunes U, 02/15/10

Performance measure 15: The bookmarks that we distribute are 8.5 x 2 inch cover stock with a specific resource URL featured on each one.
Baseline: We have not previously recorded the exact number of bookmarks distributed.
Expectation: Ten thousand bookmarks will be printed and distributed at conferences, trainings, and other venues. We will also post PDFs of bookmark sheets for schools and districts to print and distribute among their teachers and students.
Status: Expectation met. We used remaining stock from FY2008-09 for fall 2009 conferences. We printed 18,500 bookmarks for FETC in January 2010. The majority (over 10,000) were distributed at FETC. PDFs of the bookmarks have been posted at https://fcit.usf.edu/fcit_promo/index.html so that schools and districts can print and distribute them to their teachers and students.

Performance measure 16: A collection of buttons and banners will be created featuring the main resource collections available on FCIT websites.
Baseline: Buttons and banners not previously available.
Expectation: Buttons and banners will be posted by June 30, 2009.
Status: Expectation met. Buttons, banners, and bookmarks to promote FCIT resources are available to the public at https://fcit.usf.edu/fcit_promo/index.html.

Performance measure 17: One increasingly important factor in search engine optimization is the creation of an XML Sitemap for content, particularly on sites with dynamic content. We currently have XML Sitemaps for Clipart ETC, Florida Maps, Lit2Go and No Strings Attached. During this project period, we will construct XML Sitemaps for Exploring Florida, Maps ETC, and A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust.
Baseline: XML Sitemaps constructed for four FCIT websites
Expectation: XML Sitemap constructed for Maps ETC by September 30, 2009. XML Sitemap constructed for Exploring Florida and A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust by December 31, 2009.
Status: On track. Maps ETC sitemap is posted at: https://etc.usf.edu/maps/GoogleMapsSitemap.txt. Caution, this file can be viewed in a browser, but it is very large. XML Sitemaps are intended only for use by search engine spiders.

Deliverables Status

Additional Digital Content

This project will support FCIT staff to supervise separately-funded OPS staff in the creation of digital content appropriate for K-12 students, K-12 teacher professional development, or K-12 teacher preparation in the state of Florida. The range and quantity of additional funding sources, but may include the following:

Master Digital Educator Program

The Project Manager will oversee the expansion and refinement of the Master Digital Educator Program. The two Training and Development Facilitators will provide ongoing professional development for the Master Digital Educators.

In consultation with the Florida Department of Education, the number of MDEs may be expanded either through continuation of the current cohort method or by an alternative route for qualified district trainers. Expansion of the MDE pool and travel for any face- to-face training of existing MDEs is contingent upon available funding from EETT and/or ARRA sources.

Teaching and Learning Institutes

This project supports Florida's reading goals by providing both student reading content and professional development for teachers.

The Lit2Go site supports reading by providing audio passages for students--a best practice supported by current research.

The Educational Technology Clearinghouse points teachers to recommended resources to support reading instruction.

The Summer Institutes, Master Digital Educators, direct technical assistance, and online professional development all support strategic imperatives one and four--increasing the supply of highly effective teachers and improving the quality of instructional leadership. The online student resources support strategic imperative three--improve student rates of learning.

CD-ROMs/DVDs

Contingent upon additional funding contributions from EETT awardee districts as a part of the Florida Digital Educator Program, ARRA and/or similar funding sources, FCIT will produce and disseminate discs of content such as the following titles:

The discs will be primarily distributed at conferences in Florida. We also will mail reasonable numbers to schools and districts who request them as provided in the special budget request for postage for this purpose.

The public is encouraged to comment upon this project. E-mail comments to the FCIT Director.