Narratives

1.0 - Management Component

The goals of UD management are to facilitate effective implementation of the other components of the grant. Sites, students, teachers and parents will have the necessary instructional media, resources, equipment, and training to meet the overall goals of the grant.

Qualified personnel and consultants will be located and hired to implement the grant program.

Assessment of the infrastructure needs such as wiring and electrical requirements will be conducted in conjunction with the appropriate OUSD departments and improvements arranged if needed. Equipment needs will be assessed and the best solution for each classroom will be researched, engineered and installed.

UD staff and partners will collaboratively analyze issues around scheduling, projects planning, resource development and professional development issues. The necessary contracts for each partner organization and various vendors will be written and approved by the various oversight organizations within OUSD. OUSD staff will be responsible for overall project management.

Professional development will be planned and organized by UD staff in collaboration with project partners and the Teacher Leaders who work with each project. Resources, on and off-line, will be developed that support the goals of the grant and reflect the innovative characteristics of the grant proposal.

Evaluation, both formative and summative, will be contracted to an outside provider and facilitated by the UD management team. A variety of evaluation techniques will be used and documented. Meetings will be regularly scheduled and grant planning will be informed by the results of the evaluation.

Approximately 50 teachers per year will receive equipment and training.

2.0 Professional Development

The goal of the Urban Dreams professional development program is to provide high school teachers of Language Arts and Social Studies and support staff with new strategies and techniques necessary to help high school students improve expository writing and historical thinking skills in the context of human and civil rights.

Teachers will be trained in project based learning methodologies, Internet research strategies, expository writing teaching skills and how to integrate technology in the context of the curriculum.

Project partners such as the Interactive University at UC-Berkeley, the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project at Stanford University, and the World Affairs Council will provide enriched content and technological access to original source materials as well as technological expertise and tools to make the success of this project possible.

Building capacity and sustainability are additional goals of the professional development component and to that end a number of Teacher Leaders will be designated to work with each project partner. Teacher Leaders will work in partnership with project personnel to design materials suitable for inner city high school students and that address district, state and national content standards. Teacher Leaders will be asked to participate in the major Urban Dreams Summer Institutes and to provide coaching for other teachers who participate in the grant.

The overall design of the UD professional development will be to establish the Teacher Leader group to work closely with the project partners, the conducting of an 8 day Summer Institute for each year's cohort of teachers, provision for ongoing technology training throughout the school year and coaching, both on site and on line. The construction of an electronic community and ofon line resources to support the teachers will be accomplished by the establishment of web pages, live and electronic accessto staff development, and teacher access to electronic community tools. KDOL, the district cable television station and distance learning will be to deliver content as well provide professional development options.

3.0 Standards Based Curriculum Supported by Technology

Urban Dreams will integrate with and support the curriculum that has been developed by the district Language Arts and Social Studies curriculum teams. A major task to be undertaken by the UD grant is to help high school teachers become knowledgeable about content standards. Teachers will learn to construct standard based lessons with embedded technology. These lessons will focus on assisting students to reach mastery of the content.

The current state of standards awareness, installed technologies, and technology practices in the curriculum will be assessed. Strengths and weaknesses will be identified and used to guide the course of professional development.

The development of electronic resources to support the curriculum will be explored with the project partners. This will include the development of web pages, original source materials and collaborative tools to create learning communities.

The end results of these efforts will be to create meaningful, content rich, technology rich environments for both teachers and students. Curriculum embedded technologies native and transparent to teaching styles and content delivery will result in significant gains in LA and SS achievement for OUSD high school students.

4.0 Parent Community Component

Recognizing and empowering parents and the community that surrounds our students and schools is a critical component of UD. Building leadership capacity and bridging the Digital Divide by placing technology in the homes of our students are two goals of this component.

Parents through a community service program will be able to earn a refurbished computer that will be permanently placed in a student's home. This computer will have application programs necessary to support the academic efforts of a student and their families. The equipment for this program will be provided through the services of community organizations.

The establishment of a training program to support parents will focus on the training of the parents. This organization will provide training on the use of the equipment and organize the monitoring of community service hours necessary to "earn" a computer.

Home school connections will be strengthened through the use of technology. The grant's goal of building support and leadership capacity with the parental community will be supported by using web based resources, utilizing the OUSD phone calling system and the district cable station KDOL.

The design of the parent component will vary from site to site depending on other programs that may exist at a given site and the site priorities. Building a community of students, parents, teacher and UD staff will result in significant gains in language arts and social studies achievement.

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