Technology Audit of Math Teachers in Adams 12 District High SchoolsBruce Barker, IT6999

In the sabbatical proposal I wrote to get a year off from my math teaching job (with .75 pay!), I promised

to learn great things that would help me and my fellow math teachers improve our teaching and our students’

learning. It was to that end that I pursued this project – to find out how math teachers in Adams Twelve high

schools are using technology in their teaching, and what things they would like to be able to do. My hope was

that I could then identify some needs/wants that I might be able to pursue as one or more projects in my ILT

program classes. I also had ulterior motives; I wanted to learn about other tools, techniques and resources that

others were using so that we could try them in my own school, and I wanted to do some networking to better

connect our little math department of three to the rest of the district.

My aim was to interview one or two people, preferably the more tech-savvy teachers, from each high

school – Legacy, Northglenn, Mountain Range, Horizon, Thornton and Vantage Point (my school). I considered

either sending questionnaires or conducting phone interviews, but due to my desire to make connections and

the possibility of observing them teach (in case I heard about something interesting they do during an

interview), I decided to try to conduct them all in person. This entailed dozens of emails to find the willing and

able, and to schedule (and reschedule…) all of them. I succeeded in talking to nine teachers in Adams 12

(including myself), from all six high schools. In addition, I arranged for a phone interview with a math teaching

couple at Broomfield H. S. in Boulder Valley, as I was curious to see how we stacked up to another district. I first

looked into using a pre-made tech survey, but quickly realized that I would need to make my own – in order to

get exactly what I wanted as quickly as possible. As you can see in the attachment (the completed surveys in my

illegible handwriting), most of the questions are open-ended. This was intentional, since I wanted to them to

talk in depth about how they use the different technology, and hopefully include interesting things that I may

have forgotten to ask. As I conducted the first interview, I found a few questions that needed reworking or

omission, and a couple that I should have included; I made these changes on the fly that first day, and on the

form for subsequent interviews.

The level of technological proficiency and use varies greatly from teacher to teacher, of course, but I did

notice some distinct differences between schools. Legacy’s math department is definitely the most progressive

in terms of technology use. They have a few teachers who are quite tech-savvy, and whose expertise has rubbed

off onto most of the rest – largely due to the fact that theirs seems to be the most collaborative math department

in the district. They have also benefited from the grant-writing work of one teacher who won Smart boards for

every math classroom; during my interview with Mike Meyer, he showed me how he was using it with our math

curriculum, and really taking advantage of its full capabilities. He also said that: “I can’t imagine going back to

teaching without it!” Thornton seemed to be the least progressive technically, where one teacher (Renee Lay)

who had recently completed an Instructional Technology masters was not doing much beyond using her

projector to show warm-ups and the occasional student paper. I had heard that our newest high school,

Mountain Range, had the latest and greatest technology and was expecting leading edge tech use, but I found

them to be fairly average in that area.

Besides the basic classroom PC, hardware and software acquisition in Adams 12 is largely up to each

individual school and department and their budgets. All math departments have classroom sets of TI-83/84

calculators, and Vantage Point has 13 of the new TI-Nspire handhelds. All schools have LCD projectors, though

Thornton, Northglenn and Horizon don’t have them in every room. Northglenn, Legacy and Mountain Range

have ceiling mounted projectors, but at Legacy they were mounted too far from the whiteboard, and at

Mountain Range they’re too close (you’d think this is something that could be tested before installing?!).

Projector usage varies widely, from warm-ups a few times per week, to all class, every class for a wide variety of

uses. All Legacy math rooms have well-used Smart boards, Horizon has two Smarts and three Mimios (for 16

teachers), Thornton has one Smart board, Northglenn has Starboard tablets for some teachers, Vantage Point

has a few Mimios (recently discovered in a closet), and Mountain Range has a couple of tablets which they’ve yet

to try out, but they do have wireless keyboards and mice for their class computers which they sometimes hand

to students to use. Document cameras range from none at Northglenn to every classroom at Legacy, Thornton

and Vantage Point. Horizon had most of theirs stolen last summer. Each school has a few clicker systems (for

the whole school), but only a few math teachers have used them, and then only very sporadically due to the

large setup time. Thornton has one TI Navigator system (though the one teacher who used it left) and Vantage

Point has 3 sets which are mostly unused (pushed by a short-time teacher without consulting the rest of the

department). There are no computer labs dedicated to Math (like in BVSD), except for the Mountain Range math

department which has one mobile set of laptops (seldom used).

Besides the standard Office package (For Powerpoint, Word and occasionally Excel), all teachers have TI

Smartview – a simulated graphing calculator, and Geometer’s Sketchpad, which only gets scattered usage

(unlike some BVSD schools who use it fairly regularly in their labs). Teachers with Smart boards or tablets use

the software that comes with them, which for many Legacy teachers means continually. There is a smattering of

teachers who use resources from/on the web, such as graphing programs like Winplot, timer programs, and a

simulation, video or tutorial here and there. A few of the math texts have companion websites, of varying

quality. Teachers run into a wide range of security measures when trying to access websites or download

programs. Some have the password to unblock a site, while others have to navigate a lengthy permission

process. Teachers at Horizon can download programs, and they can even request what they want on the

computer image, while Legacy teachers have to jump through hoops to download and then have their

computers re-imaged every day. There are no district or school requirements (yet) for maintaining a teacher

website; a very few have created school or Google sites with their schedules, admin. forms, skill sheets, and even

the daily PowerPoint slides for absent students (Shawna Verbeke at Horizon).

I found a large variation in technology usage, preferences and interest among the math teachers and

departments in our district, which reflected our district’s site-based decision-making and the influence (or lack

thereof) of key teachers. More importantly, I learned who the tech leaders were in each school, which hardware

and software they found the most and least beneficial, and developed connections to help me with upcoming

projects. With an eye on a project idea I’ve been formulating (building a math knowledge base of internet &

other media resources related to our curriculum), I was trying through this survey project to find out how much

teachers have been able to exploit the internet and its plethora of teaching and learning resources. What I found

was: not much. Several cited their lack of time and/or desire to wade through all the ‘stuff’ out there to find

something useful, and/or to fight the IT bureaucracy hassles. A few people asked me to let them know about

useful technology I discovered from this project, including John and Jill Long at Broomfield, who said they were

not able to spend any of their budget this year on software due to the fact that they couldn’t find anything

useful! As a result of this feedback and previous conversations with our district’s math coach and curriculum

head, I will be looking for a way of working this knowledge base into my ILT program and project work over the

next few terms. I will also lobby our math coordinator to create a partial FTE (myself!) dedicated to its building,

maintenance and use around our district.