DesignSquad

The Design Squad foundation:




 * < [[image:MP2-Franklin_before1.jpg width="131" height="133"]] || Misty Franklin

Hello, my name is Misty Franklin and I am currently a College Program Specialist at The University of Akron School of Law. In October 2013 I completed my Bachelors of Science in Teaching and Training Technical Professionals and am currently in the Masters of Instructional Technology Program. I will complete my degree in May 2015 along with my certificate in e-Learning.

I am married and have a fifteen year old daughter. I have a passion for online education. I intend to use the skills I have acquired from my current masters program, combined with the focus of adult education obtained in my bachelors to design and develop quality courses in higher education and workforce development. ||
 * < [[image:Stacey.jpg width="114" height="151"]] || Stacy Mercer

Hello, my name is Stacy Mercer and I am currently the 7th grade technology teacher and middle school Title 1 math teacher at Western Reserve Local School District in Berlin Center. This is my second year teaching technology and my fifth year being a Title 1 teacher. Western Reserve is a small, rural school.

I am married with four children and two precious grand babies. We reside in the Salem, Ohio area. I am originally from Southern California, but I completed my undergraduate studies at Kent State University. I am currently working on my master’s degree in Instructional Technology. The knowledge and skills that I am acquiring and developing in these courses are helping me to better prepare my students to be successful in our 21st century global society. ||
 * < [[image:Denise.jpg width="126" height="144"]] || Denise Prischak

Hola, my name is Denise Prischak and I am a Spanish teacher for Ellet High School in the Akron Public School District. I’ve been teaching Spanish for 10 years, the last eight have been for Akron Public Schools. I am married with three beautiful children and we reside in Northfield, Ohio. I’m originally from Boston Heights which is a small town about 20 minutes north of Akron. I graduated from Nordonia High School and went on to Kent State University. There, I dual-majored and completed my undergraduate degrees in Spanish Translation and International Relations. After working in the private sector for 5 years, I went back to school and earned my education certificate from the University of Akron. I am currently working on my master’s degree in Instructional Technology at the University of Akron and it is my hope to use these skills to blend technology with my subject area. It has been my experience that using online and mobile resources helps keep my students interested and engaged with new and exciting ways to learn Spanish. Being a course that is constantly building on past lessons, this has impacted their grades and knowledge retention in a positive direction. ||
 * < [[image:Krystal.JPG width="131" height="135"]] || Krystal Reno-Kelley

My name is Krystal Reno Kelley. I am married and a mother of two. I have a son named Owen who is two years old. I also have a four month old daughter named Grace.

I graduated from Akron in the spring of 2014 after completing my student teaching at Cuyahoga Falls High School. I currently am a building substitute at Oberlin High School for the 2014-2015 school year. I hope to have my own social studies classroom soon. || Hello, my name is Eric Standley and I am currently a 3rd grade teacher in the Hudson City School District at McDowell School. I’ve been teaching third grade for the past three years, but fifteen overall. I began my first years of my teaching career teaching 7th and 8th grade Language Arts (which I still miss the middle school setting). I am also a boys’ high school track coach where I mainly focus on the jumping events: high jump, long jump, and pole vault.
 * < [[image:Eric.jpg width="126" height="164"]] || Eric Standley

I am originally from East Liverpool, OH (once pottery capital of the world) where I graduated high school and went on to attend Walsh University in North Canton, OH, completing my undergraduate degree in Elementary Education. I am currently married with a one year old son where we reside in Macedonia, OH. I am currently attending the University of Akron attaining my master’s degree in Instructional Technology. My passion for the use of technology in the classroom and a love for web2.0 tools really attracted me to the program and I really hope to better prepare my students for a 21st century. ||


 * **<span style="color: #20169e; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 130%;">Instructional Design Problem ** ||
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">**SME**: Michelle Marquess-Kearns, Principal at Ellet High School, Akron, Ohio ||
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">**Department**: Ellet High School ||
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">**What is the need for this instruction?** Only 50% of the 84 teachers at Ellet High School use formative assessment in their classrooms to adjust and drive instruction. The goal for this instruction is to increase the number of teachers using formative assessment to adjust and drive instruction in order to meet State requirements. ||
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">**Who is the target audience?** Teachers and support staff of Ellet High School ||
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">**What is the anticipated size/scope of the project?** A demonstration of Socrative during a staff meeting followed up by a Wiki which includes a demonstration video and additional classroom formative assessment resources. The Wiki provides links to additional formative assessment app choices that allow successful integration of formative assessment into each classroom. Additionally, the Wiki is developed in such a way that the staff at Ellet High School can add or include information under each subject matter page on tips and hints for what works in each classroom to add to the success of the PLC already in place at the school. ||
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">**Are there known delivery constraints?** Initial demonstration will be delivered in a face to face format; however, the Wiki must be delivered online. The Wiki will be linked on the school's personal S drive for all teacher and support staff access. ||
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">**Assuming this instructional product is completed before the end of the semester, would members of the target audience be available so that the team could conduct a formative evaluation?** The members of the target audience are full-time teachers at Ellet High School in Akron, Ohio and would be available at the conclusion of this project in order for team members to conduct a formative evaluation of the increased use of formative assessment in the classrooms. ||


 * ** Initial Status Report ** ||
 * [[file:DS_Initial_Status_Report.pdf]] ||

= Final Project: = Ellet Staff Wiki This is the link to our final project for the Ellet High School Staff. Because this Wiki was set up and owned by Ellet High School you will need an email and password to visit. Please use the following information:
 * ** Team Progress Reports ** ||
 * 1.)[[file:DS_ProgressReport_1.pdf]] ||
 * 2.)[[file:DS_ProgressReport_2.pdf]] ||
 * 3.)[[file:DS_ProgressReport_3.pdf]] ||
 * 4.)[[file:DS_ProgressReport_4.pdf]] ||

Email: EHSstaff309@gmail.com Password: Orangemen Access Code: TJPQ9PM (Good until Dec. 10)

= Final Presentation: =


 * **Analysis Phase** media type="youtube" key="UKcLCo6e5lU" width="529" height="304" ||
 * **Design Phase** media type="youtube" key="cFaJA-uJ9lE" width="531" height="305" ||
 * **Development Phase** media type="youtube" key="bNeUt0sh4Nc" width="530" height="307" ||
 * **Implementation Phase** media type="youtube" key="7i5N-s1P8jY" width="531" height="302" ||
 * **Evaluation Phase** media type="vimeo" key="113417852" height="281" width="500" ||

= Final Paper: =
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Please question or comment in response to our presentation below. Feel free to add more rows if needed . ||

Design Squad—Great presentation. One of your major strength was the extensive research and development your team did on formative and socrative processes! I bet your whole team learned lots on this and are experts now! Each presentation was so well done, clear and complete in helping us understand your process, challenges and successes. The use of the teacher and student testimonials were a great addition to the presentation. So one dilemma that you addressed was the non-use of the wiki resource—as you will all find unless something like this is an integral piece of information finding most people tend not to use it, especially those not tech savvy. This should not be discouraging though…Denise might consider extending the use of the wiki in the school for her field experiences..ie mentoring a few teacher or a group that wants to use the wiki more extensively. Very well done project Team Design Squad! Also, can you make the Wiki public so that we are able to look at it? Right now, the access is restricted. || Molly: When we viewed who became members of the Wiki we noticed that only a few teachers had become members, with this being a private Wiki we were able to monitor activity by those who became members. We do believe that the timing of the release of the Wiki and the completion of the project did have something to do with the number of teachers who we reported visited the wiki because we were actually receiving emails about how to log on after the survey had ended. Molly did you use the email and password provided under the Wiki link above? Because it is on the Ellet S drive we created a pseudo member. Please let us know so we can correct this so all can check out the Wiki. - Misty
 * **<span style="color: #20169e; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Your Name: ** || **<span style="color: #20169e; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Comment: ** || **<span style="color: #20169e; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Question: ** || <span style="color: #20169e; font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">**Team's Response**: ||
 * Molly May || Hi Design Squad! I think you guys did a wonderful job. I think many teachers don’t use formative assessment effectively so you had a great problem to work with. You guys had a lot of teachers respond to the analysis. It’s too bad not as many responded to the post survey. I also thought it was a great idea to provide a wiki page with additional formative assessment applications since sometimes everyone doesn't like the same thing. || Why do you think not many people used the wiki? Do you think they forgot how to access the Wiki or do you think it was due to lack of Wiki instructions or maybe the teachers just didn't have the time to explore it?

Molly, I also think issues with the usage of the wiki may have been due to the fact that it was just another place or something else for the high school staff to learn how to do. Most of the comments from our survey monkey and from the feedback provided from Denise seemed to point toward this due to the fact we were just trying to help solve the problem of making formative assessments more widely used at Ellet High School. ~Eric

Molly, thanks for your comments. Although, the teachers did not report using the wiki through the survey that we sent out, many of the teachers //are// using Socrative and other online formative assessment tools. Denise and Michelle Marquess-Kearns (the principal) plan to continue developing and using this wiki as a central location to collaborate with colleagues about formative assessment. - Stacy

Molly: I agree with what my other groups members have said. I also would add that we put out the survey at a bad time which I think showed us poor results of who actually used the survey. We put the survey out the week of Thanksgiving and I just think many of the teachers had other things going on. Also it was shortened school week. Krystal Reno ||
 * Dr. Ward || Design Squad—Great presentation. One of your major strength was the extensive research and development your team did on formative and socrative processes! I bet your whole team learned lots on this and are experts now! Each presentation was so well done, clear and complete in helping us understand your process, challenges and successes. The use of the teacher and student testimonials were a great addition to the presentation. So one dilemma that you addressed was the non-use of the wiki resource—as you will all find unless something like this is an integral piece of information finding most people tend not to use it, especially those not tech savvy. This should not be discouraging though…Denise might consider extending the use of the wiki in the school for her field experiences..ie mentoring a few teacher or a group that wants to use the wiki more extensively. Very well done project Team Design Squad! ||  || Dr. Ward, thank you we each learned so much from this project. We were all discouraged with the low amount of traffic to the Wiki and hope that over time the interest will grow. It was really a good feeling to see the video of actual students and teachers using the skills we provided. I believe the feedback in the video Denise took at Ellet was fulfilling to know we made a difference. - Misty

Dr. Ward, thank you. We learned a lot through working with each other to solve this formative assessment problem. It was great to get to work online collaboratively with a group. It was nice to see the videos of the teachers and students actually using Socrative. I also hope that Denise and her colleagues will continue developing and using this resource in the future. -Stacy

Dr Ward, Thank you so much for the positive feedback. I really enjoyed this project because it really gave us a chance to work on a real problem in a school that truly needed some help with formative assessment. I was really glad to have had such a great team and it paid off to speak up about Socrative. I learned about it a couple of years ago, tried it with my 3rd graders once and left it alone due to time constraints. Now I can really see the value in it! I also see the value of the whole ADDIE process and how much work went into a problem that I thought would have been easy to correct and the problems that arose along the way. Thanks again! ~Eric

Dr. Ward, I'm glad your liked the testimonials! It was important to us to show that although the survey did not turn out great we were receiving great feeding back from the school itself. - Krystal Reno || sevchek || Great job on your presentations design squad. I really enjoyed seeing the feedback from the students and staff members. We use socrative in our building in as well with 4th and 5th graders and they too find it easy to use. They enjoy seeing the results on the Smart boards to see who has gotten all the correct answers. || I tried to open your wiki page, but it asked me for the join code. Is this because I am already logged into wiki using my information?Do I need to log out and log in with the email and password above or do you have a join code? || Hi Jessica, thanks so much for your feedback. I'm glad to hear that others are having success with Socrative as well. The original information that we gave you is not working right now so I changed the login information. In order to access the Ellet wiki, you will need the email address, which is also the username,: EHSstaff309@gmail.com. The password is:Orangemen (it is case-sensitive) and possibly the access code: TJPQ9PM. - Denise
 * Jessica

Jessica, thank you! It was very rewarding for all of us to see the feedback from the students and staff. Let us know if you have any problems with the log in that Denise updated for us. - Misty

Jessica, thank you for your comments. We enjoyed seeing the feedback about using Socrative too. How do the 4th and 5th graders use Socrative in your school district? Do all the teachers use it? -Stacy

Jessica, its great that you were able to use socrative with your students. I love that it is a program that works with so many different grade levels and subject. -Krystal Reno ||
 * Jacki Cain || Great job on your presentations! I like how you broke up your elements into separate presentations (definitely something I wish we would have done in retrospect!)

There is a big push for formative assessment in our district this year, so it is great to see district close to home working with the same initiative! Thanks for sharing. ||  || Hi Jessica, thanks so much for your comments. I agree, there does seem to be a big push for formative assessment lately and I think that Socrative is a great tool for the job. I like it because I can get immediate feedback from my students and then adjust my instruction accordingly. -Denise

Thank you Jacki! It is amazing the number of tools out there for teachers to use to implement formative assessment into the classroom. It has definitely changed over the years and leads more to instruction being driven by the students rather than the instructor! - Misty

Jacki, thanks for your comments and praises about our presentation format. We decided, as a group/team, to separate the presentations into five separate videos, but to keep the same format throughout all the presentations. Formative assessment is such a useful tool to find out what your students already know, so you, as the instructor, can build on prior knowledge. How is formative assessment being pushed in your district? -Stacy

Jacki, I think the separate projects made it easier on us as well. it was easier to put everything together than check with one another instead of putting all into one project. -Krystal Reno ||
 * Deborah Jones || I think you did a fantastic job on your project. It looks very clean and the sound was very good for me. Very easy to understand your issue/presentation. Great job. || I also tried to open your wiki page and received an error or message to join. Was your wiki page made public? || Hi Deborah, no our wiki is not public because we want to use it as a staff tool only, we don't want outsiders to be able to view it and edit it. Thanks for your positive comments, I'm glad that you enjoyed the presentation.- Denise

Deborah, thanks for your positive comments. Have you tried to open our wiki now with the username/password or the updated access code? -Stacy ||
 * Marlise Ramsey || I am impressed that your staff had positive feedback for your presentation. There is so much going on, many staff don't want to do anything new. Your videos were informative as well. I liked getting feedback from the students. ||  || Marlise: One of our biggest challenges was getting the buy in by the staff to try something new. As we all know many teachers do not like change, especially if they have been teaching the same way for many years. The introduction of technology is always greeted with some resistance for those who are unfamiliar the benefits. I am hoping more staff see the feedback video and the interest continues to climb. - Misty

Marlise, thank you for your comments. As Misty said, there was some resistance (//at first//), but the teachers seemed to be more receptive to trying it out //after// they witness how using an online formative assessment tool will make their job easier. -Stacy ||
 * Kerry Stanziano || You did a great job on your presentation. It is apparent that you put a lot of time and effort into your project. Formative assessments are so difficult. Many staff members do not understand its importance regarding effective instruction. Your presentation was easy to follow and understand. I like the format of having a separate video for each step. ||  || Thank you Kerry! Each one of us learned a lot about the use of formative assessment, along with additional tools to include into our own teaching. You could not have stated it better - "many staff members do not understand its importance regarding effective instruction." When we talk about inclusion of formative assessment many teachers will say that they do include it daily, however, they include it for points and not for the true purpose of adjusting and driving instruction. That is the challenge. - Misty

Kerry, Thanks for the feedback. We were worried that separating it into sections may make it sound repetitive, but thanks for the comments! I couldn't agree more on the formative assessment comment as well. I think we got a few to "buy in" and that would certainly be considered a win in my book! ~Eric ||
 * Justin Plas || Love the cohesive presentation it was brilliantly designed. I understand the issues that arose within the implementation. Within my own building it is often difficult to get a staff to buy into anything. There is a perception that "our plates are full" and asking them to so anything is too much even if it wil help the. ||  || Justin, Thanks for the comments and I think that was the case here as in many high and low achieving schools from their staff members. Being in a high performing district, it always seem like we're "on board" with the next big thing which adds one more thing to our plate. But I think that if we helped a just few people learn more about a quick and easy way to conduct formative assessments, that's a step in the right direction. ~Eric ||