How An Idaho School Leverages Technology To Increase Content Knowledge In Limited Class Time

Cole Valley Christian School, Meridian ID

Clevertouch- cole valley

Cole Val­ley Chris­t­ian School par­tic­i­pat­ed in a lim­it­ed pilot pro­gram with Clev­er­touch inter­ac­tive touch­screens in the class­room. With Clev­er­touch, stu­dents were con­sid­er­ably more engaged in the lessons, gain­ing more con­tent knowl­edge and skills in the lim­it­ed class time. Stu­dents were able to engage with the tech­nol­o­gy with almost no train­ing and could see the bright dis­play with lit­tle glare.

The Experience

Cole Val­ley Chris­t­ian School pro­vides ear­ly edu­ca­tion through 12th grade. The school fea­tures two cam­pus­es with over 800 stu­dents enrolled. Stu­dents par­tic­i­pate in the NWEA MAP test, ACT and SAT, con­sis­tent­ly scor­ing above nation­al, state and local aver­ages.[1]

After being intro­duced to Clev­er­touch at IETA, a con­fer­ence for IT and instruc­tion­al edu­ca­tion­al pro­fes­sion­als in Ida­ho, Cole Val­ley decid­ed to pilot Clev­er­touch inter­ac­tive white­boards. Clev­er­touch was in the class­room for three weeks. In that short time, teach­ers expe­ri­enced sub­stan­tial increase in stu­dent engagement.

The pilot teach­ers at Cole Val­ley were expe­ri­enced with inter­ac­tive touch­screen dis­plays. Because they have first-hand knowl­edge of inter­ac­tive white­boards in the class­room, they could pri­or­i­tize key areas of impor­tance. They specif­i­cal­ly high­light­ed a bright, low glare dis­play, mobile stand and lit­tle to no learn­ing curve as impor­tant features.

 

Clevertouch in the classroom

Student Engagement

Clev­er­touch increased stu­dent engage­ment by rough­ly 85% accord­ing to the data gath­ered by the pilot teach­ers. They were con­sid­er­ably more engaged in the les­son and excit­ed to vol­un­teer. Teach­ers lever­aged the tech­nol­o­gy for activ­i­ties like label­ing fish parts on a pic­ture, fill­ing out table data and edit­ing graphs with authen­tic data. This cre­at­ed a pos­i­tive learn­ing envi­ron­ment for stu­dents. The inter­ac­tiv­i­ty, along with the abil­i­ty to quick­ly switch between Clev­er­touch pro­grams, enabled stu­dents to gain more con­tent knowl­edge and skills in the lim­it­ed class time.

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Brightness and Mobility

Bright­ness of the dis­play is a top pri­or­i­ty for inter­ac­tive touch­screens so stu­dents can eas­i­ly see and engage with the con­tent. Clev­er­touch cou­ples a 350 cd/m2 bright­ness dis­play with anti-glare glass. Unlike pro­jec­tors, inter­ac­tive touch­screens have no shad­ow, so stu­dents can see all the infor­ma­tion on the screen.

Being able to move inter­ac­tive dis­plays  is a sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fit for Cole Val­ley. Clev­er­touch has var­i­ous mount­ing options, and Cole Val­ley uti­lized the rolling trol­ley solution.

Easy to Use

The third major ben­e­fit for Cole Val­ley was how user friend­ly the dis­play was for stu­dents and teach­ers alike. The android oper­at­ing sys­tem and built in PC made Clev­er­touch intu­itive for stu­dents. Instead of spend­ing time train­ing stu­dents on the sys­tem, the teach­ers could quick­ly launch into course mate­r­i­al so every minute could be used inten­tion­al­ly and purposefully.

Switch­ing between pro­grams quick­ly made it more effec­tive in the class­room. From import­ing files from a flash dri­ve to down­load­ing, teach­ers quick­ly manip­u­lat­ed and active­ly saved data. Addi­tion­al­ly, there was lit­tle wait time to switch from video to Pow­er­Point and white board, result­ing in a decreased need for class­room man­age­ment techniques.

Final Thoughts

Though Cole Val­ley expe­ri­enced Clev­er­touch through a pilot pro­gram, it made a clear impact while in use. By offer­ing a bright screen, low learn­ing curve, wire­less inter­net and mobil­i­ty, stu­dents and teach­ers were empow­ered to spend more time on con­tent knowl­edge and teach­ing. “With the inter­ac­tive and quick Clev­er­touch, stu­dents gained more con­tent knowl­edge and skills in our lim­it­ed class time. There­fore, every sec­ond in class proved more inten­tion­al and purposeful.”

* Stu­dent engage­ment was mea­sured by an assess­ment before and after the use of Clev­er­touch. This was aver­aged with a cri­tique of a record­ed les­son by two administrators.

Find out more about class­room tech­nolo­gies.

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