High-tech tools reduce paperwork, allow more time for teaching

University Park, Pa. -- Special education teachers in Pennsylvania regularly monitor their students’ progress in learning how to read, write, do math and much more. The monitoring process is critical to helping students succeed in the classroom and in life. However, the process is time consuming for teachers, and it focuses their efforts away from the students. Soon teachers and others who work with students with disabilities will have a new tool to help them simplify and speed up monitoring of student progress, so they can spend more time teaching.

The Special Needs Assessment Program for Progress Monitoring (SNAP-PM) is designed to give teachers a suite of technology that includes handheld computers or personal digital assistants (PDAs) and desktop computers loaded with specially designed software to collect and report student data. Project partners include three Pennsylvania Intermediate Units (IUs) 8-Appalachia, 10-Central and 11-Tuscarora, Penn State Continuing Education at University Park and TekResults Ltd., a corporate information technology (IT) services company based in State College, Pa.

The Pennsylvania Technical Assistance Network (PATTAN), part of the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Bureau of Special Education, is providing $93,500 and 110 PDAs for the pilot project, which runs through June 30, 2005. Each project partner also has donated a great deal of time and effort to make the project a success.

Scott Burfield, a life skills teacher in the West Branch Area School District, is the first teacher to test the capabilities of this technology in the classroom. He works with nine students with disabilities in a life skills class that serves students in grades seven to 10 in Clearfield County. Burfield said he is using his PDA “to measure student progress on goals and objectives, so I spend less time on paperwork and more time teaching.”

As the project progresses, about 100 teachers, education consultants, paraprofessionals and administrative staff in the three Intermediate Units will be trained by TekResults Ltd. and Penn State Continuing Education to use the PDAs and software. Teachers are excited to have the PDAs, Betty L. Bunnell, educational consultant for assistive technology and technical assistance for IU 11, said.

Nichole L. Kopco, special education supervisor/education consultant with IU 8, added, “The assessment probes are designed to measure reading and writing fluency, math computation and application skills, behavior skills and specific skills designated by the individual needs of the teacher and student.”

Students with disabilities have an Individualized Education Plan (IEP), developed by their teacher and education support team, which lists learning goals and objectives tailored to the student’s specific needs. With a PDA, Burfield and other participating teachers will be able to store specific goals for a student, such as learning to tell time using an analog clock or improving reading skills. He will then be able to collect and save data about the student’s progress in the PDA while he is in the classroom teaching. His observations will generate graphs to illustrate a student’s learning progress.

Bunnell explained, “Teachers will start with a baseline of where each student is now and then project for the year, using a student’s IEP, where they would like the student to be in terms of reading fluency, math skills, behavior skills, etc. Right now, doing progress monitoring by pen and paper is time consuming for teachers, and their paperwork seems to be growing exponentially.”

“The custom-designed software will save an enormous amount of the teacher’s time,” Annette Fetterolf, project manager and associate director of technology development for Penn State Continuing Education, said. “SNAP-PM will allow teachers to analyze data and change educational strategies based on the results to better meet individual student needs.”

Rita Doran agrees “the cost savings will be astronomical in time and personal resources for teachers.” A special education consultant for Pennsylvania Intermediate Unit 10, Doran wanted to explore ways to streamline how teachers collect data, track students’ progress and schedule classroom and other school-day activities, so she contacted Penn State Continuing Education at University Park for help.

Sue Hill, former associate director for technology training and development with Penn State Continuing Education, and Doran discussed the issue, and Hill suggested trying handheld computers. Off-the-shelf software would not meet all of the needs of special education teachers, so Hill contacted TekResults Ltd. about developing specialized software.

At the same time, Doran and colleagues in Intermediate Unit 10 conducted a small study using PDAs to collect some sample data and do some simple activities with the devices. The results of the informal test were promising, so Doran and Hill and a group of colleagues from the three Intermediate Units prepared a grant proposal to conduct a pilot test. PATTAN agreed to fund the project for one year.

TekResults Ltd. Founder and Principal Martin Sheridan reports the software has been tested in Burfield’s classroom, and the project is right on target in terms of software functionality and schedule. “It’s a testament to all the hard work that people have put into the project,” he said. “We are proud to be associated with this project and to make a difference in the community and especially to be able to have such a beneficial impact in the classroom.” TekResults Ltd. is currently making changes based on experience in Burfield’s classroom and preparing for the next release that will be made to two additional classrooms.

The software has been designed to be extremely flexible to accommodate a wide variety of probe types and teaching methods. “We are fortunate to be able to design and implement the software from scratch,” Sheridan said. “There is nothing like this in the education marketplace, and it is sorely needed.”

“The software deployment phase actually will unfold as three levels, with each level adding on additional staff and project participants,” Kopco said. “The idea is that we will be able to troubleshoot and provide for error analysis as we work our way up to complete participation with all project participants.”

Some of the participating teachers already have received two days of training in progress monitoring and a one-hour overview session on how to use the PDAs from Dan Berger, coordinator of educational technology in IU 11. Penn State Continuing Education and TekResults Ltd. plan to train 60 to 70 more teachers and paraprofessionals to use PDAs for monitoring student’s progress in learning new knowledge and skills.

The Special Needs Assessment Program for Progress Monitoring team also is conducting presurveys of teachers and parents and will conduct postsurveys, as well, to evaluate the effectiveness of the software and PDAs.

“Parents sometimes have difficulty understanding teacher reports,” Bunnell said. “We hope this new method of monitoring and reporting on students’ progress will be easier for parents to understand. Instead of just telling parents how their student is doing in the classroom, teachers will be able to show parents data.”

The PDAs will have a variety of uses in the classroom for assessing progress in reading and math, as well as behavior, life skills, speech and language, Bunnell noted. They should work in preschool through high school, for special education teachers and regular teachers, she said.

The project team demonstrated the software to the more than 1,300 attendees of the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s annual conference in Hershey this year. “There was tremendous interest,” Sheridan said. “Teachers throughout the Commonwealth are excited about the project and believe that SNAP-PM will make them much more effective. They can’t wait to get their hands on the software.”

Ultimately, the project team would like to seek funding for a grant to expand the project statewide, Doran said. “We’re at the proving ground now,” she said. “I see the PDA as a constant tool in the classroom that a teacher can use to quickly record something and continue on with teaching.”