Palm Beach County Schools Embrace Online Teaching Tool

Case Study: Palm Beach County Schools Embrace Online Teaching Tool

Article summary:
In an effort to provide technological tools to help educators do their jobs, have access to more diverse learning materials, and create a safe learning environment for students, the Palm Beach County School District recently rolled out an online teaching tool that is helping teachers collaborate with each other and with their students.

Powered by My Portfolio, the K-12 “safe search” tool called netTrekker d.i. allows educators to create, organize, and share content district wide. Unlike a search engine, netTrekker d.i. is an educational search tool that transforms digital content into custom designed resources for educators and students. It provides access to more than 300,000 digital resources that have been evaluated by SMEs for quality and academic appropriateness, organized by grade and reading level, and aligned with state standards. It is used by individual teachers and district curriculum staff to create project based learning activities and units for standards based instruction.

Some challenges/obstacles faced when implementing this tool district wide included:
• The district’s existing web portal was not compatible with netTrekker d.i. The product support team collaborated with district educational technology personnel to create a solution that was flexible enough to work within the portal.
• Implementation was challenging due to the large number of teachers that needed to receive training and support.
• Sharing resources through the school’s existing internal firewall was also problematic.

Reflection:
This seems like a practical tool educators can implement into curriculum design, instruction, and collaboration. The collaboration aspect is what I find particularly valuable. Too often, educators find themselves isolated in a classroom without the support or guidance from peers and/or administrators. Using tools like netTrekker d.i., the obstacles/barriers faced in the traditional classroom are minimized using collaboration to provide a fresh perspective and a sense of community.

My district recently implemented a program called Data Director. It is a data management program, but also provides teachers an opportunity to collaborate and share content with grade level and subject matter peers.

Article written by Bridget McCrea 2/19/09
http://thejournal.com/articles/2009/02/19/case-study-palm-beach-county-s...