Although schools capture significant data on student performance -- including achievement and aptitude test scores, attendance, special needs, and behavior records, teachers have surprisingly little access to timely information on their students. Without this information, they are unable to provide students with individualized learning support.
Even when this information is available to teachers, it often requires sophisticated data analysis in order to discern meaningful learning patterns over time. This becomes virtually impossible when coupled with the time constraints of teachers.
IBM, working in partnership with Miami-Dade County Public Schools, and Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, is designing and developing a Teacher's Workbench to address this challenge. By integrating and conducting the initial analysis of student information, the Workbench provides teachers with easy access to timely information so that teachers can take substantive action immediately. The Workbench integrates planbook, gradebook, longitudinal, and demographic data from multiple data sources into one place, presenting the information in a personalized view. The Workbench also performs ongoing trend analysis and alerts teachers to potential achievement issues and concerns. Intervention recommendations and links to relevant teaching and learning resources are provided as well, ensuring that teachers can address any student learning issue quickly.
Imagine for a moment the current teacher's desk. Even the most organized teacher will have an assortment of items they use throughout their day to teach students and manage classroom activities on that desk. Such items include paper (student work, a planbook, resource materials, attendance reporting cards, etc.), a computer for Web-based applications (a gradebook, student testing reports, historical attendance information, etc.), and reference materials. Several of these items must be used together to gain a clear understanding of each student and to plan effective instruction tailored for each student and the class. The Workbench is pulling together these important pieces of data in digital form, analyzing and organizing the resulting information into a single view, to enable teachers to supplement their understanding and characterization of students quickly and when it counts (rather than at the end of an entire unit of instruction, end of semester, or end of year when it may be too late).
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