School Boards today are focused on reaching the 21st Century learner. Important discussions and strategies about the role of technology in the classroom to more effectively engage and capture students interests are inevitable, and lead to the question: how can we, as school boards, change to meet the needs of our 21st Century learners?

Peterborough Victoria Northumberland Clarington Catholic District School Board (PVNCCDSB) has taken bold and aggressive steps towards this, by developing a systemic change project. Their Fast Forward project aims to empower teachers with technology to assist them in being more productive and, most importantly, delivering curriculum in a manner which is more relevant, motivating, and engaging for their students.

In 2006 each elementary classroom in PVNCCDSB already had a pod of computers with a rich portfolio of educational software designed to assist and complement the core subject area teachings. PVNCCDSB was now planning to provide each teacher with a desktop PC that would allow them to use a new application to track attendance and update marks on-line.  Over time these PCs would also give each teacher the access to information for making more informed decisions about strategies in the classroom and differentiated instruction for improving student achievement.

As Greg Reeves, Superintendent of Schools and Technology, and Sean Heuchert, Manager of Information Technology, met with Senior Admin about changing teaching practice to match todays learner, the
possibility emerged of substituting the desktop PCs with laptops.

Through careful planning, the following goal statement emerged for the project:

Success for every student will be more attainable when teachers are empowered by providing them with access to data wherever, whenever, to make informed decisions that will enable them to design and deliver differentiated instruction to each of their students.

The project impacted the entire board, from administration to parents, however the lives it affected most were:

Students:
- impacted student achievement (21st Century student)
- expanded their learning to the broader, global, flatter world
- engagement levels and participation in class at a whole new level
- enabled them take charge of their own learning

Teachers:
- Informing them quicker of student performance, in order to take sooner, better action against data
- Greater efficiency overall in administrative requirements
- Richer resources for whole group and small group instruction
- Provided a springboard into other technology integration (interactive whiteboards, LCD projectors etc.)
- revitalized motivation in making the curriculum come alive not only for their students, but themselves

Parents:
- improves parents lives for home school communication
- homework from school is more relevant to real world applications

Because PVNC adopted this initiative systemically, with strong one time and ongoing support for these users, the technology was more of an overall statement rather than just the device.   There were key infrastructure decisions that set the stage nicely for this (single image across the district, rich suite of multi-sensory curriculum applications available both at the school in the PCs in the classroom, but an identical environment on their own personal laptop (technically challenging to architect, but possible).   By putting the tool in the hands of teachers anytime, anywhere, it allowed them to relate to the 21st Century learner, made the pods of computers in the classroom come alive, changed software usage from being standalone activities like typing, to curriculum rich content and integration into instruction.  This changed and improved instructional practice, the ability to provide better, more accurate, and targetted information on student achievement (through more effective collection of data), to broader and more meaningful professional learning communities (PLCs), both within the school borders, but beyond in subject specific department communities in the schools and at the board office level (ex. collaboration of District Science heads).

Yes

Yes

Unlike other mobility initiatives in Canada and the United States, the Fast Forward project had a significant investment in professional development.  Each teacher beginning in the program received 3 full days of training, with the intent of ensuring that if the district made the investment, the goals and objectives of the project would be met.  The objectives included use for:

Administration
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This phase could include everything for communication including email, newsletters, letters home etc. and things that most were doing already.   This non-threatening introduction assisted in overcoming the barriers for any reluctant users.  During the first "Laptop Care and Feeding" sessions, it was clearly communicated what the overall expectations for the project, however basic laptop operation was reviewed, setting up an LCD projector, how the laptop operated on and offline, and basic wireless tasks.


Planning
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Careful planning and design work around the way the laptop operates was given for this phase.   The appearance and way the laptop worked and looked offline, needed to mimic the way it looked when connected to the school network, and the focus was to drive all planning tasks to the laptop, with the aid of some online tools.


Assessment
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Carrying through on the initial intent of electronic report cards, teachers were also asked to track PM Benchmarks, as well as gather anecdotal data for reporting.  Teachers and administrators also have begun to have a much closer relationship with the data and performance statistics on knowing where their classroom and students stand in district, provincial and statistical neighbours context.


Instruction
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The longest and most advanced usage, is for teachers to use their laptop in class, for instruction either in whole group or small group.   They were also trained on different strategies to work their students into centre based instruction, with the focus on attempting to use the pods of computers effectively as well, as their comfort grows.   The district also a good challenge in the demand for instruction support technology (LCD and Interactive Whiteboards) has grown exponentially.


All training was geared to ensuring success in each of these areas, by accelerating the comfortable users, and supporting those beginning with a less advanced set of skills on how to use the technology and give them confidence.   Typically a district has 20% of teachers that will adopt and embrace technology with or without a laptop, however the other 80% is never addressed while the technology sits idle.  This project has overcome this easily, and provided the vehicle to making significant gains in empowering this 80% of otherwise unreachable teachers in affecting teaching practice.

Through this balanced approach, Fast Forward has had a huge impact on human relationships, and the way they interact with each other:

- child to teacher
- child to child
- teacher to parent
- teacher to teacher
- teacher to district
- teacher to information
- child to information

Each of these interactions are successfully making the transition to the electronic world, motivating the children, re-energizing the educators, revolutionizing the curriculum, and most importantly achieving excitement and momentum in learning.

When we began with a vision of anytime, anywhere access to technology for our teachers, we could not have imagined where it would bring us.  In a thank-you note, one teacher told us how when her mother was in palliative care, sleeping most of the time, she was able to keep up with her school work while her mother slept but still be in the room for those precious moments when she did wake up.  Another teacher used their laptop as a centerpiece in a student led parent-teacher conference where the students took their parents through their digital portfolio.  Another great example of savings and productivity gains would be our last collection of diagnostic reading assessment scores which was completed in two days, a process that used to take weeks.  

Most compelling though, is the feedback we have received from our teachers:
"I use my laptop continually.  The convenience of having it with me no matter where I am is great I cannot imagine trying to do my job without it."
"I find that I constantly use it daily for classroom activities with Junior Kindergarten."
"I have thoroughly enjoyed my laptop.  I find it an amazing educational tool."
"I use it for everything.  I don't know what I would do without it."
"It is an important teaching tool that I use on a daily basis throughout the day."
"I couldn't live without it now."
	
Many more positive quotes/comments available.

Overwhelming statistics on multiple layers support that this project is and will continue to be successful, like:
94% of project teachers report that laptops have made a difference in their students lives.  

Finally, our provincial standardized test scores have increased each year of the project.  Other research results available in Appendix 1 and 2.  Further Teacher anecdotal feedback included as Appendix 3 (First year post test, responses to questions "How has your laptop affected your teaching practice?" and "How has your laptop affected your students?".)

The project has been so successful because of the partnerships and co-architecture.   One partner (IBM K-12) brought a national perspective and best practice approaches around technical design, project management and training.  Another partner (Teacher Union) provided support needed to ensure teachers were part of the end deployment, and their interests in saving them time well represented (versus appearing as a negative "They're asking us to do what?"  Other partnerships with Curriculum services, as well as voices at the table from end users (teachers and principals) rounded out the pilot and proof of concept stages, and enhanced the end product beyond a typical IT planning approach that has hurt implementation in other boards.

Other exceptional pieces that were IN place before deploying, were pods of computers in all classrooms, single standard image to map to, a school interface (middleware) that offered layers of security and ease of use not available in a raw Windows environment, and a rich suite of curriculum software which help to provide electronic resources for teachers to align to the curriculum they are teaching.

Since the inception of Fast Forward, a significant support system has been established for the teachers.  Significant one time professional development is VERY unique, given that each teacher received 3 release days for training, which is a huge investment (roughly 50% of the project budget).   After the training ongoing support was offered through PLCs at the school level, the integration of teacher and school Smart goals, with hands on sharing and best practices within the district, a dedicated portal with videos, online collaboration, and a host of supporting webinars for users requiring additional support.

If that werent enough, once a year there is a board provided computer conference which is attended by all teachers, with their laptops, in focused sessions of their choice around everything from productivity applications, to in depth subject specific sessions focused on instruction.

The last, and most important critical success factor is the support from senior administration, the board of trustees and the project team who have all been integral in making this a living project.  Before every year, and every major teacher in-service, significant time is taken to plan the most effective session possible, be it facilitation technique or workshop activity, and the assessments and proof parameters are constantly adjusted to ensure the project is having measurable positive impacts.

Technically there were several potholes that needed to be avoided through carefully planned automation, scripting and leveraging the school interface middleware and active directory.  

The tool needed to behave in a fashion that:
-	didn't intimidate or scare the teachers
-	provided every software resource that was available on the school network in offline mode (to encourage informal preparation and planning time)
-	backed up files automatically
-	be easily recoverable by local administrators by re-imaging if necessary
-	provided predictable anytime, anyplace access

From a results perspective, it was critical that the project proved its success.  In doing so, measurable results were critical to track usage, teacher competency, student achievement, impacts to communication in the board, and overall improvement across ALL teachers, digitally to the 21st century learner.

The nature of the geography which PVNC covers, large distances and bandwidth (average of T1 connections to each school) dictated how the device operated in a single Active Directory structure, as well as how itinerant teachers were handled, and how the device behaved when taken from one's home school to another, printer management, local server network drive access, and beyond.  Significant design and testing was required to ensure this worked well.

Proving sustainability and gaining funding and ownership at the trustee level was the biggest hurdle to overcome, yet because our senior administration and trustees are able to prioritize projects so well, it was easily overcome through careful planning and articulation of the strategy.    Part of that challenge was also overcome with the extensive measurements and supporting research illustrating the impacts.   All key decision makers (trustees included) wanted to make sure we stayed within project parameters, and that cost was allocated based on one time approval according to the 6 year plan, only to be revisited when the new plan would come due.   This strict adherence to only asking once, helped to recently getting the new 6 year plan approved, including a significant investment in the Wide Area network to increase bandwidth, as well as strong provisions for more advanced technology for the classroom (interactive whiteboards, LCD projectors, clickers etc.), which was an expected by-product of the project.

Achieved

Fast Forward is PVNC's point of view on how true integration and managing change works in the 21st century.   Inter-connecting people via technology is changing the way the board interacts.  

This includes:

-	Relationships between people (Virtual and face to face)
-	Relationships between the board of trustees, senior administration, teachers, unions, curriculum teams, student success leaders, computer services
-	Using Student Achievement data and its impact on decisions made to further improvement
-	Operating in an environmentally friendly manner cutting down on printing
-	Relationship to staffing, productivity efficiencies, and the realization of more time to do other things
-	Relationship between yesterdays teaching approach and tailoring to todays 21st Century learner
-	Globalizing the learning experience
-	Enhancing the impacts of professional learning communities
-	Exciting the Teacher
-	Exciting the Learner

Through Fast Forward we are all now connected  pedagogically, culturally and socially. But being connected was not due to the device, but rather ALL of the supports and infrastructure to make our board become flatter and smaller. 

Entering the 4th year of the project, we are seeing strong adoption characteristics.   From a basic adoption standpoint (Administration phase) we have achieved 100% of the goal.   From an Assessment and Planning phases stand point we are well on the way (70%+ users K-12), and the most difficult adoption phase (Instruction), over 90% of users have stated that they agree that the Fast Forward programs has aided them in delivering differentiated instruction to their students.