Teachers at Turning Point Learning Center will be involved in creating teaching and learning modules that soon will be available to students and educators around the world.
The project is underway through the Educational Services and Staff Development Association of Central Kansas (ESSDACK) in Hutchinson, which operates Turning Point for the Emporia school district.
ESSDACK received a $33,000 grant from AT&T to help with the project. AT&T gave a total of more than $140,000 to four local high schools and organizations, such as ESSDACK, as part of an AT&T program to promote high-school success and workforce readiness, according to a news release from the company.
The release said that ESSDACK’s responsibility will be to develop a database of “real-life” learning experiences based on 16 career clusters, with a long-term goal of convincing more students to stay in school and complete their high-school educations and beyond.
The program is something that already was underway at ESSDACK.
“We had already planned the first session,” said ESSDACK Executive Director Mike Cook, Ph.D. “We wanted to get the grant, but if we didn’t get the grant, we were going to do it anyway. The grant will ensure that it gets done.”
Cook said that ESSDACK is building a database that will ultimately be available to anyone online who wants to use the information.
“It will have project-based learning modules in there and teachers will be able to access that for their classrooms, and it will tie to student interest levels,” Cook said.
As students get results of career-interest tests, “there’ll be projects in there that they can go in and do and take them down a learning path in that direction,” he said.
The work is intended to contain a high level of interest and hands-on work for the students, to motivate them to stay in school and get their diplomas.
“Where it ties into the dropout-recovery system that we have is that we have these learning centers all over the state,” Cook said. “What we’re going to do is utilize that database to help those students. ... The more interest the student has in what they’re doing, what they’re learning, the less likely the student is to give up, quit going to school.”
A student will be able to go into the database of project- and problem-based learning modules, search for the appropriate modules that have been built just for that purpose, and find the kind of learning projects he or she is interested in doing. Teachers, naturally, will have access to the modules, which are similar to lesson plans, but on a larger scale.
“Some of these could take a week to do, some could take two days, some could take six weeks,” Cook said.
He mentioned architecture as an example of an area where the modules would be effective. A student might be assigned to design an academy that’s energy-self-sufficient and set in the mountains.
“They might have to go and research ..., do some math, write up the whole game plan,” he said. “Instead of sitting in a classroom for 55 minutes, it’s going to be integrated.”
ESSDACK member districts, such as the Emporia school district, will be among the initial testers of the material.
“Then once we get it tested and know that it’s working really the way we want it to work, then we’ll roll it out to the states,” Cook said. “Once it gets available to the state, it will be available, really, to the world, because it’s going to be out there” on the Internet.
Cook expects much of the work on the modules will be done by the Emporia ESSDACK staff.
“Up at Turning Point Academy, Ginger (Lewman) and her crew are really versed in how to build these,” Cook said. “So they will be a key component in helping us as we design these.”
ESSDACK already has held two meetings with 65 educators at each session to develop the program. Another meeting is scheduled after the first of the year.
Once the skeleton of the database is created, it will begin receiving prototype modules.