Ames Community School District

Ames Community School District:Making the most of the latest technology

The Ames Community School District is located nearly exactly in the middle of the state of Iowa. The district’s middle school and five elementary schools have all been recently rebuilt or remodeled. The buildings look modern, shiny, and full of light. You’d be surprised to hear they also function as tornado shelters, since the town of Ames—home to Iowa State University and the Barilla pasta factory—sits in tornado alley. The Ames Community School District believes in getting their students in front of the latest technology and helping them use that technology in practical and creative ways. To this end, Ames is pushing the envelope of what can be done with G Suite for Education and Android apps on Chromebooks to fundamentally transform how their students learn.

GOOGLE TOOLS

5,464 Chromebooks

5 years using Chromebooks

100% of K–8 students using Chromebooks

6.5 years using G Suite for Education

94% of students using G Suite for Education

DISTRICT FACTSPublic school district

BY THE NUMBERS

4,844students

GRADES SERVED

Pre-K–12TOTAL SCHOOLS

81 Preschool 1 Middle School 5 Elementary Schools 1 High School

How we got hereIn Iowa, students can attend any school district, no matter where they live. As a result, districts like Ames have recently invested heavily in technology to attract students. In 2010, the district had 600 devices for nearly 5,000 students K–12. In 2014, Ames went one-to-one at the middle school—the elementary schools followed in 2016. Ames believed the best way to help students explore technology on a deeper level was an investment in next generation Chromebooks with features like Touch, Stylus, and World-Facing Camera.

Knowing that teaching and encouraging the new technology was as important as the technology itself, Ames hired either a Technology Coach or a Technology Teacher Librarian at every school. Now with approximately 6,000 devices, middle school students take their Chromebooks home every night, and elementary classes have more Chromebooks than students.

Ames, IA

370teachers

Ames Community School District

Flipping the classroomChromebooks play an especially important role in Robyn Reisetter’s 7th grade math class. Students use their stylus to digitally complete class assignments directly on Chromebook screens and then import their assignments right into Google Classroom. Mrs. Reisetter is working toward a paperless classroom and loves not having to “print out another twig” for every assignment. Students find it easy and exciting to do their work with styluses, and they know they’ll never lose another important document because they’re all right there in Google Classroom.

Mrs. Reisetter explained that not long ago “I was struggling with our class periods being only 45 minutes. I didn’t feel like it was long enough for me to confidently send the kids out the door.” She researched the flipped learning model, attended FlipCon, the annual flipped learning conference that year in Kansas City, and then tried it out with her class. Now her classroom is completely flipped. She uses the Android app Explain Everything to create video lessons and posts them to her YouTube channel. Students watch and rewatch them for homework, at their own pace. Now, class time is devoted to students working on assignments in small groups and Mrs. Reisetter addressing their individual needs.

“By doing all of this, by making my videos, by flipping my classroom,” Mrs. Reisetter said, “I am doing more by doing less. Which is like Hallelujah, Amen. Because as a mom of three kids, I can go home and be mom, and I’m not checking ump-teen different papers. And they’re doing twice as much work, having way more actual academic conversations in the classroom rather than being completely silent and listening to me teach.” Ginevra Cook, a student in her math class, reported

“It’s so much easier because she can explain it to you. She makes a video and sends it on Google Classroom, and we watch the video at home. If we have any questions, the next day in class, she explains it, it’s a lot easier than trying to understand it yourself at home.”

This September, Mrs. Reisetter went on maternity leave just three days into the school year (a full three weeks earlier than she had expected). Students were able to watch Mrs. Reisetter’s Explain Everything videos that she created while she was out, and the substitute teacher had access to all her guided notes in Google Classroom. This way, students felt they got to know their teacher even when she wasn’t there. When she did come back mid-December, she could pick up with the class where she left off.

“The best feedback I ever got was from a kid. He came in one day after watching my video and said, ‘Mrs. Reisetter, my mom finally knows what the distributive property is!’ It dawned on me, parents can watch these too! One mom came in and asked if other teachers use videos like that because ‘Julia and I, this is what we do every night. We watch the videos together, and then we talk about it.’ ”

Robyn Reisetter, 7th grade math teacher

Ames Community School District

Adventures in 3D printingAfter 30-plus years of teaching mechanical drafting and then CAD design to high school students, Willie Lodermeier now teaches Digital Citizenship and takes groups of 8th graders through Tinkercad. Students design, proof, and 3D print their own projects in a former computer lab now stripped of desktops, turned into part-classroom and part-inventor’s workshop, and then enhanced with four 3D printers. Students manipulate 3D designs on touchscreen Chromebooks and then keep a daily log of their progress in Google Classroom, giving Mr. Lodermeier a quick view into how far along they are.

One 8th grader, Tucker Drury, was ahead of most of the class. Already having printed his own lightsaber, he was working to design a 3D hand with movable joints and anchor points where he planned to attach strings to control it. Students have the option of coming in and “Tinkering” in their free time, designing whatever they want, like a broken piece of a toy from home. “In the past you taught theory,” Mr. Lodermeier explains, “but this course is designed around discovery and inquiry. This is their language. This is their learning style.”

Starting them early with appsAt Edwards Elementary, lessons on Chromebooks start with even the youngest students. Kimber Spaulding uses the Peacock app to teach her kindergarten class to count. The students use their “magic pencils” (as she calls them) to write on their screens, practicing counting and writing numbers. The highlight of the class was when Mrs. Spaulding asked the kindergarteners to draw “a silly face of how today made you feel” and then projected each self-portrait in front of the whole class. Meanwhile, first graders in Amy Simonson’s class opened the day’s lesson in Google Classroom where a cartoon boy was hopelessly trying to catch a fleeing gingerbread man in the Android coding app Scratch Jr. The sequence of commands meant the boy would never get him. Together, the class rewrote the code, so the boy could catch his gingerbread after all.

“In the past you taught theory, but this course is designed around discovery and inquiry. This is their language. This is their learning style.”

Willie Lodermeier, Digital Citizenship teacher

Ames Community School District

APPS WE LOVE

Students choose to spend their lunch in STEMMidafternoon, the Edwards Elementary Maker Space was buzzing like a video arcade, this former computer lab, now emptied of its terminals, was full of 4th and 5th graders on their lunch breaks. In a room off to the side, groups of three and four students used Hummingbird robotics kits and their Chromebooks to bring to life all sorts of loud, blinking, and walking creations. In the main room, long and expansive with a full wall of windows, a whole series of mazes and obstacle courses sprawled across the floor and tables, and smaller groups of students took turns programming and reprogramming many Sphero robots (round and rolling robots—think headless BB-8s) to navigate the perfect course or roll up a ramp and drop into the mouth of a bright yellow Minion cup.

After school, the First Lego League meets here, mentored by high schoolers in First Robotics, which is a lot like a club to build those giant robots that fight, just without the fighting. Technology Coach Patrick Donovan explains that this space “Goes along with the whole philosophy we’ve been trying since I got here, really focusing on getting kids in front of technology and helping them use technology to meet our core standards. It has taken a long time, but we’re getting there.”

It all comes togetherThe Ames Community School District is using next generation Chromebooks and their newest features, like Touch, Stylus, and Android apps, in essential and innovative ways. A hands-on team of Technology Coaches is helping teachers become fluent with the new technology, make the most of it in their classrooms, and essentially change how their students learn.

“[The Maker Space] goes along with the whole philosophy we’ve been trying since I got here, really focusing on getting kids in front of technology and helping them use technology to meet our core standards. It has taken a long time, but we’re getting there.”

Patrick Donovan, Technology Coach

”Book trailers” are the new diorama. Students use WeVideo “book trailers” to advertise a book they read, pulling in photos from Google and recording their own voices.

Want to design and print 3D shapes (like a hand)? Students use Tinkercad for in-class project and in “Tinker Tutorials” during their free time to design a lightsaber or pretty much whatever they want.