1. Action Plan
1. Identification and Summary of local issue:
The local issue that I have identified and am in the process of addressing is the use of E-
learning (digital curriculum strategies) to enhance our traditional F2F courses at
Northland High School. Currently there are two teachers, myself being one of them, that
incorporate any sort of systematic E-learning (beyond Internet research and presentation
software/hardware) into their classrooms at all. According to the research that I have
done to date there are major advantages for student learning when using web-
enhancement or blended learning in traditional classes, and the use of digital curriculum
strategies is also becoming more pronounced at every level of education. My school
district needs to be on the front edge of these educational phenomenons rather than the
trailing because we are a small district and are always in search of new ways to draw
students from the small surrounding communities to our school district. In short we need
to be progressive in our educational tactics and aggressive in our methods to attract and
keep students. It is my belief that the incorporation of digital curriculum strategies and
the use of technological tools into our traditional classrooms and instruction will go far
toward helping ISD 118 achieve those ends.
2. References
This issue has led me to find the following target audiences: teachers, students,
parents/taxpayers, administrators and the school board. I have found the following
resources that address how to sell the incorporation of E-learning to these target groups:
Teachers:
Romizowski, A. (2004) How’s the E-learning baby? Factors leading to success or failure
of an educational technology innovation. Educational Technology, 44 (1), 5-27.
Students:
Crawford, D. L. (2006). Characteristics leading to student success: a study of online
learning environments. Unpublished submitted to the faculty of the graduate
school of Texas A&M University-Commerce in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of doctor of education.
Parents/taxpayers:
Naidu, S. Designing interaction for e-learning environments. In M. G. Moore and W. G.
Anderson (Eds.), Handbook of Distance Education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrance
Earlbaum Associates, 2003.

2. Administrators:
Hall, J.L. (2003) “Assessing learning management systems”, [online], feature article for
chief learning officer. January
http://www.clomedia.com/content/templates/clo_feature.asp?articleid=91
School Board:
Department of Education, W. (2000). e-Learning: Putting a World-Class Education at the
Fingertips of All Children. The National Educational Technology Plan.
http://search.ebscohost.com
3. Action Plan
When creating a new plan of action one must consider cost. What I am proposing here is
to incorporate the use of digital curriculum strategies into our traditional classes using
OER’s or open education resources (free or mostly free). For example, in my classes I
have begun to use both Wikispaces.com and Voicethread. Wikispaces can be totally free
if you don’t mind a lack of security because after 30 days everything you create is open
to public view unless you subscribe for $4.95 per month. This price is very small and
could be used out of a teacher’s academic budget. The same is true of Voicethread. It
can be totally free but a much safer and secure option is to use the library subscription
that costs one dollar per user. In our high school and junior high this cost would cover
every student and teacher in our building for $200.00, we would have our own secure
site, and students too would have the ability to make 15 Voicethreads per year on the
secure site. There has been talk as well of bringing D2L into our building because
subscriptions are available to us through our relationship with IASC (Itasca Area School
Consortium) and MINFINITY (an online school collaborative). We pay for these
subscriptions already so our students can take online courses but a better option is to use
another LMS/CMS (learning/content management system) that is available for free like
Moodle. Moodle again can be totally free but there are a multitude of hosting options
available that can ensure a seamless transition (security, bandwidth, trouble-shooting etc.)
into a school for a much less prohibitive fee than D2L or Blackboard (which are highly
expensive LMS/CMS’s). The short and long of it is this…we can spend some money that
we can afford because it is already budgeted to ensure security or go totally free or be
somewhere in between.
Teacher training, on the other hand, is a separate issue that may prove costly. Northland
Community Schools has several vocal advocates in the teacher union. Developing online
curriculum isn’t mentioned specifically in our contract. Adding to the duties of the
teacher (by this I mean requiring all teachers to incorporate digital curriculum strategies
into the framework of their traditional classrooms) without compensation I can guarantee
will be an issue here. However, there are a number of teachers trained here in how to use
Moodle (at least six) and we typically have a great budget for staff development. That
means that this could be done in-house with money already allocated for staff
development. Would the teachers be willing to do this here? I haven’t generated any

3. data at this time to give any answer but a guess, but I do know that our administration
looks favorably at this proposal and is actively pursuing making this a reality.
What I am proposing here is basically the web-enhancement of all traditional F2F courses
in the junior high and high school at Northland. There is no good reason to propose this
unless academic rigor is guaranteed. There are some concrete reinforcements in place to
make sure that rigor is at the core of instructional modifications. The first is that we are
replacing current courses with purely online courses. That is to say that our traditional
classrooms have gone through extensive measures to ensure rigor and incorporating
digital curriculum strategies are adding to these measures not detracting from them. The
second is that in terms of using discussion as an instructional strategy (an often
overlooked and poorly done aspect of traditional classrooms) the potential for student
learning and growth is without a ceiling. Asynchronous discussion allows one time for
reflection and can be evaluated in much more concrete ways than classroom discussion.
Finally, rigor can be guaranteed through a comprehensive, collaborative and monitored
process of course creation/implementation. It is safe to assume we will not be perfect
right away but the opportunities for collaboration are enormous compared to what is done
now (we sit in our own little city state classrooms/kingdoms where nobody tells us what
to do or how to do it).
If ISD 118 is to adopt my proposal, implement it, and evaluate its effectiveness then the
opportunity for good and bad press exists. Schools in general do not do a good job with
promoting themselves through the media. Lots and lots of cool things happen inside the
walls of America’s schools everyday. What I am proposing, I believe, has the
opportunity to give our schools many chances for good press. I think that people are
starting to believe in the power of the Internet to provide their children with educational
opportunities (look at the home-school boom). I think people want to know if they are
getting anything for money they put out (like monthly fees for the Internet). I think
people want to believe they are involved in their children’s education. I think people
want to know what schools are doing to help their kids become successful.
My proposal addresses all of these concerns. We need to do a better job of using
technology and digital curriculum here and if we do it will be a great benefit to our
students. I think having 24/7 access to course materials is a benefit for students and
parents (so that they can see what we’re doing if they want). 82% of the students in our
school district have the World Wide Web available to them and more than 40% of that is
high speed (these numbers grow each year according to our technology committee
surveys). Using web access for educational reasons will most likely appeal greatly to
parents. It’s our job to prepare kids for success in the 21st century learning environment.
Finally, I’m not talking about raising costs for an entire school more than $1,000.00.
This is an educational bargain if I’ve ever seen one.
I can see bad press happening too. We are a small rural district where people are still
suspicious of the Internet. If something were to happen like it did in Pine River, MN
where a young girl was murdered after going to meet someone she encountered on
Craigslist.com, we most likely would have to remove all computers from our schools

4. (hyperbole). Some make an argument that people are losing their ability to communicate
with others face to face and there may be some truth to that (however, I don’t think that
social networking is going away anytime soon unless the sun explodes). Some of our
students may not have access and the school should be responsible for providing that
access to some degree. When I look at these they seem almost a little silly compared to
the benefits our students will get from online education and the opportunities for good
press that our district will get.
One of the biggest issues that this proposal faces is whether or not teachers will get
compensated for online curriculum development. The answer here is yes and no. We are
on a five-year curriculum cycle here at Northland High and we do get paid up to 100
hours for curriculum development in the first year of that cycle. 20 hours of pay are
available for each year after that to review and revise curriculum changes. Our teachers
also get a paid prep hour daily and we receive extensive opportunities for professional
development if we seek it out (it is also scheduled on training days when an issue comes
to the forefront like this one almost certainly will). So I these ways we will be
compensated for online curriculum development. On the other hand, I am not including
additional pay outside of what is already contracted to teachers. For lack of a better
phrase, the fur is going to fly for those teachers here who are disinterested in the idea in
general and who dislike or are unknowledgeable about technology. This is the biggest
area of contention I have identified. It’s too bad really because we are talking about
nothing less than familiarizing our students with the way that much of their future
educations are going to be conducted. Teachers need to see the reality of that.
Will you execute any pre-post data to measure:
Academic Growth
Critical and Creative thinking growth
Moving “at risk” students to the “general population column.”
ISD 118 Northland community schools has a lot of assessment resources in place. First
off there is the data we collect each year from MCA and GRAD testing. This data in
particular will give us some baseline data for each student in math, reading, writing, and
science when they enter 9th grade. We also do fall and spring MAP testing produced by
the NWEA. MAP testing in particular will be of the most benefit to us as an assessment
tool because we do it twice per year with each student (except for seniors) in math and
language arts.
Critical and creative thinking growth can also be assessed. The depth and degree of
growth in thinking when creating comments should be visible over time. Online learning
also presents opportunities for authentic assessment that often are not feasible in the
classroom and these too can be evidence of critical and creative growth. As for a
standardized measure I would not recommend another day lost to testing in our district.

5. The final measure of effectiveness for this program that can be measured is in helping at-
risk kids succeed. This could be done with a variety of measures ranging from
attendance improvement, assignments being completed on time, improvement in overall
GPA, a decrease in behavior referrals, and passage of standardized testing measures put
on by the state. We have a large population of at-risk students in our district as well
being 58% free or reduced lunch, 25% Native American, mostly rural, and having a
group home and alternative school in our district. A concrete system is in place to
monitor these students to through our mentorship program (each teacher has about ten
students in a reading, homeroom, mentorship period for 20 minutes per day).
4. Timeline for reporting out with empirical data?
With this proposal it is my intent to sell the ideas for the balance of fall semester to
several members of my district including six key teachers, the technology administrator,
the high school principal, and out superintendent. I have set up a schedule of meetings to
show progress by using my classes as an example. It is my hope that the other six
teachers will try to use the strategies and tools in their classes as a result of our
professional learning circle.
Baseline data for students from fall semester should be available by January 25th. At this
time it is my hope that a much more systematic and coordinated effort will be in place for
many teachers to use our new tools. We can do comparison sets of data at the end of the
school year. Map testing results will also be crucial here for empirical data. This data
includes current student level from fall and will track their progress into the spring. This
data is also several years in the making so we can see what the standard variable of
student growth was for a particular kid and see if digital curriculum strategies
implemented in the spring semester had any statistical significance toward educational
growth.
By next year I am hopeful that the initiative has been made to include E-learning into all
courses. We will have end of the year data from many sources and have three
opportunities to view and report any impact that has been made on our students during
the 2010-2011 school year.
We also partake in the Hope study (a study that surveys how hopeful a student is about
their time spent in school). It will be interesting to see if incorporation of E-learning
impacts those measures as well.
5. Technology Tools
Two new tools have been put in place at this time in my classes. The first is
wikispaces.com which is Web 2.0 program. Students can author documents together on
this site as well as use it for a discussion board. Programs like this, until a LMS/CMS
program is in place are absolutely crucial to the development of digital curriculum
strategies here at NHS. It’s free to use and is a powerful educational tool.

6. The next tool crucial to early development of digital curriculum strategies is Voicethread.
This is a discussion board tool with many great features. Its interface is viewable and
supports most kinds of media from video to audio recordings to MS documents of all
kinds. The participants in each thread surround the interface and they have the option to
make comments with their phone, webcam, text, photograph/image or audio recording.
As a free tool this one is almost limitless in it applications and it also fits nicely into the
free LMS Moodle.
6. Moving Forward
There are three things that are necessary for me to do to move toward completion of this
project and proposal.
• I must create a strategic plan for overcoming any bumps and obstacles that may
come up during the early stages of this proposal (like the closing of
wikispaces.com).
• I must create an acceptable use document with the help of my students in order to
guide all future users here at Northland High School.
• I must create a four hour boot camp to put students through before they can
participate in E-learning.
When I complete these tasks I’ll be ready to piece together the finalized proposal to
present to my school board and this class sometime (hopefully) by the end of November
or very beginning of December.