Northern Arizona Technology
Integration Coaching Consortium

 

Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) 2007-2010

The federal EETT program provides funding for competitive grants throughout the state of Arizona to partnerships of schools, community organizations, and businesses to improve student academic achievement through the use of technology in schools. It is also designed to assist every student in crossing the digital divide by ensuring that each student is technologically literate by the end of eighth grade, and to encourage the effective integration of technology with teacher training and curriculum development to establish successful research-based instructional methods which can be widely replicated.

In Flagstaff, Project Director Mary Knight and Project Facilitators Heather Zeigler and Tricia Roach submitted a grant proposal to the Arizona Department of Education for the 2007-2010 school years to implement a technology peer coaching project using EETT funds. In partership with five other school districts, this three-year project establishes a technology peer coaching program at every school for which a coach is available in the six districts .

The technology peer coaching program uses the Puget Sound Center model to implement a technology peer coaching structure. Training held during the summers of 2007, 2008, and 2009 for all partner districts included intense work on coaching and communication skills, technology integration strategies, and lesson design. The full-time teachers who were trained to be coaches are now back at their school sites and have selected collaborating teachers with whom to share their technology integration expertise throughout the school year in a one-to-one relationship. At each school, the primary focus will be integrating technology to help meet school and district goals for student achievement. Three more full days of training are scheduled throughout the year to offer support and feedback on coaching efforts.

Capacity building is a natural outcome of this grant project, as more and more teachers are trained as coaches or choose to work as collaborating teachers. Professional learning communities are established and supported in ever greater numbers.

In tandem with the peer coaching implementation, each coach will receive equipment and training to create a technology-enhanced classroom. This will serve as a model for collaborating teachers and others to observe the impact of technology integration on student achievement and teacher productivity.

Project facilitators will support all coaches in the six partner districts in any way needed to achieve the goals of the project. This includes making site visits, locating resources, providing professional development training, maintaining program documentation, and coordinating needs across the consortium.

Some modifications were made in our third year of the grant project based on information collected during the first two years of the project. The coaching focus was concentrated at the Primary School in Tuba City, with three coaches and three collaborationg teachers. Administrator technology coaching was added in Flagstaff, in order to promote best practice strategies among school leaders. Williams School District will receive technology peer coach training with our cohort of grant project technology coaches and will obtain support for their coaching efforts throughout the year from the Arizona Technology Integration Specialist for Coconino County.