2007 Innovation in Education Award Winners
inspire Award
Program: NEEDS Outreach Transition Page
School/District: Madison High School, San Diego Unified School District
Description: Two special education teachers created the NEEDS Outreach Transition Page designed for teachers, school personnel, parents and community members who work with kindergarten through twelfth grade students, and most importantly for the students themselves. This website enables all students, with a focus on students with exceptional needs, to learn the skills essential for successful transition from school to careers by providing a sequential framework of activities and resources: career awareness, career exploration, personal documentation, work and volunteer experience documentation, workplace accommodations, and career preparation.
Doug Gilmore, Executive Producer of Instructional Television Channel 16, San Diego County Office of Education, recognized the way that this program brought parents, teachers and community resources together to assist students in need of special education programs. As producer of the video profiles of each award, Doug looks forward to presenting the student portfolios to a broader audience.
innovate Award
Program: Geography and Geographic Information Systems
School/District: Helix Charter High School, Grossmont Union High School District
Description: Utilizing cutting edge Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology, teachers have created units within their geography classes to introduce students to learning geography through technology. They have then continued their technology quest by implementing a stand-alone Geographic Information Systems course geared towards teaching the fundamental components of GIS education through projects. Students in the course create, input, and analyze data through spatial representations in order to answer questions to political, economic, cultural, social, and environmental problems.
“One usually thinks of GIS systems for making interesting maps, but the way these teachers have brought challenging community issues into the classroom and stimulated problem solving and critical thinking skills using GISt present student analysis of data is a tribute to the creativity of innovative teachers,” said Rick Beach, Innovation Wizard, Classroom of the Future Foundation.
achieve Award
Program: Academy of Information Technology
School/District: Hoover High School, San Diego Unified School District
Description: The Academy of Information Technology is a small learning community within Hoover High School. Connecting with the career pathway of information technology, academy students take a series of effective and content area courses that provides them with both past secondary educational and career options after high school. The academy also partners with the local community college to articulate its program so students can earn college credits while still in high school.
“The results from this innovative program go beyond the traditional measures of these scores to reveal the underlying learning behaviors that will serve these students as they enter college and the work force,” said Bruce Braciszewski, Executive Director, Classroom of the Future Foundation.
impact Award
Program: Project LIVE
District: Escondido Union Elementary School District
Description: Project LIVE fosters 21st century and visual literacy skills in both students and teachers to increase students achievement. This group of teachers works as a professional learning community to use digital video to address content standards in order to lead to measurable student achievement gains. Teachers are trained in digital video software and a variety of image-making hardware to create standards-aligned videos with their students. We have three years of data demonstrating measurable student gains in Project LIVE classrooms.
Todd Gutschow, past chair of the Classroom of the Future Foundation, observed “What impressed me was the way that Project LIVE used academic achievement data to identify concepts that students had not yet mastered and then motivated students to get so involved in their own learning. The achievement results speak for themselves.”