The Missing Link

Academy School District Twenty is located at the northern end of Colorado Springs in one of the state’s fastest growing areas. We have five high schools, four middle schools and sixteen elementary schools. (District 20 also has one charter school.) Our close proximity to the Air Force Academy and several high-tech industries has provided multiple opportunities for learning partnerships and at the same time contributes to high expectations in terms of technology use and integration from our community. Indeed, Academy School District Twenty has always been on the leading edge of information literacy and technology integration in the region, and has a history of placing student learning as the guiding principle when making decisions about technology.

Academy School District Twenty delivers a comprehensive and academically challenging standards-based curriculum with an emphasis on inquiry based instruction. The district recognizes the importance of student access to information and technology and the use of real-world resources. This access and use is important to facilitate critical thinking and to allow students to practice their information literacy skills and solve problems. Academy School District Twenty also recognizes the importance of teaching students to be critical thinkers to increase student achievement and prepare them for higher education and the workplace within a global society.

The Power Initiative Missing Link Grant promotes staff development in the areas of inquiry-based instruction and collaborative instructional design that integrates technology and information literacy. All activities begin with the District Twenty Content Standards with an emphasis on the Information Literacy Standards and Benchmarks. There are two primary goals:

Goal 1: To provide time and training for learning the inquiry process and how to collaboratively plan instruction that follows the inquiry approach for a core group of teachers, librarians, and technology specialists from every school in Academy School District Twenty.
Goal 2: Teachers, librarians and technology specialists from every school will collaborate to design and teach technology and information literacy-rich units that use an inquiry-based approach, and will receive support as they engage in the planning and teaching of these units.

Why is it called Missing Link? In 1999, our school district was awarded a Colorado Technology Literacy Challenge Fund Grant, which was titled “The Missing Piece.” The “missing piece” was staff development. Through the 3-year grant program, staff development was provided to hundreds of district teachers for the purpose of helping them to integrate technology into units of instruction for students. This had a huge impact on teachers, not only increasing their skills, but changing the way they thought about technology, and helping them to gain the confidence to integrate technology successfully. Once over this hurdle, our district started thinking about what the next level might look like. How could we make technology integration even more meaningful to students, and show real results in terms of increased student achievement? We believe the answer is through collaboration – our “missing link.” Academy School District 20’s ET/IL plan calls for the librarian, technology specialist and classroom teacher to work collaboratively to integrate information literacy through the use of technology. The Missing Link grant builds on the original professional development that occurred during the Missing Piece Grant. It provides the missing link of teacher collaboration with librarians and technology specialists.

In July, 2004, over one hundred Missing Link grant participants received training on inquiry-based learning with Dr. Jamie McKenzie. These teams worked collaborative teams of librarians, technology specialists, and teachers to produce “Slam Dunk Digital Lessons.” These lessons were both inquiry-based and Web-based. They are available here in PDF format, ready to use with students.

In September 2004, the Missing Link grant participants met by feeder school groups to learn how to use the Blackboard online system, where we created an “online learning community” for participants. This online learning community features discussion boards and readings on topics that support the activities of the grant, including inquiry-based learning, information literacy, information literacy assessment, collaboration, technology integration, and evaluating student work to determine if standards are being met. We’ve established a partnership with Cherry Creek School District , allowing some teachers, librarians and technology specialists from this Denver Metro school district to participate in the Missing Link online learning community and join in our online discussions.

Each collaborative team will produce a minimum of 2 inquiry-based lessons/units. The lessons will integrate technology and information literacy, and will assess information literacy for a minimum of 10% of the student’s grade. It is our hope that when we evaluate the data, we will see an increase in student information literacy skills. Grant participants will share lessons, units, and examples of student work during school level meetings to evaluate the grant program in May. Evaluation is ongoing through the Missing Link Online Learning Community as participants share ideas, lessons, and information.