OSHEAN eCurrent Fall 2019 | Page 16

MEMBER SPOTLIGHT In the Future of Education, We’re All Students How West Warwick Public Schools is Blazing the Trail for Shared Educational Leadership Just a few years ago, West Warwick Public • Schools (WWPS) became a 1:1 Chromebook school district as part of the “early adopter” Recording of student reading to evaluate their reading ability • Recording and examining thought program. Since putting 4,500 Chromebooks processes as a student works toward in the hands of students, faculty and staff completing a math problem in order to see across the district, WWPS has witnessed where they may be missing the mark in vast improvements in measurable student solving the answer outcomes as well as success in teacher collaboration and lesson planning beyond the walls of the classroom - and they are just getting started. Currently, WWPS utilizes educational technology tools more than any other school district. Beyond the physical device itself are myriad programs and dashboards that take the learning environment to the next level. In a dashboard called “Collections,” which serves as a Pinterest of sorts for teachers, colleagues can share ideas and collaborate. Similarly, students This past June, West Warwick teachers and teachers can collaborate on a dashboard received a new set of Chromebooks that have called, “Playlist” in which they engage in a advanced capabilities to assist in the classroom Distributed Leadership Model to share lesson and collaborating with other faculty including: planning and curriculum formulation – a pride • Flip tools with a writing stylus point for Jim Monti, Director of Educational • The ability to record conferences Reform, Compliance and Technology at WWPS and webinars and his team. • Advanced data intelligence that collects student information and presents it to the teacher to help them interpret where they could do better • Speech to text capabilities 16 | 2019 eCURRENT “We found very early on in our testing of the Distributed Leadership Model that the more teachers and students collaborate, the better the outcomes for everyone involved,” said Monti. Stronger Together | 17