UG Academy Grant Program "Partnering Technology In Our Schools"

Grant Award Winner: MacValley User Group Steve Wozniak, and Daphne Gruberman of MacValley MUG Individualized Education Program Database The Individualized Education Program (IEP) within the Los Angeles City Unified School District aids 320 students at the Kittridge Street Elementary School with specific learning disabilities. __ The IEP program is a federally mandated structure per Public Law 94-142 (The Education of All Handicapped Children Act). The law guides our actions necessary to set up the goals and programming for a child with disabilities. __ The cornerstone of this law is the provision of a free appropriate program of publicly supported services to children with disabilities. The vehicle by which such services are provided is an individually designed and written program of education developed by committee, including the parents, and safeguarded by a system of due process. __ It is the hope of the MacValley User Group to assist the 20 Specialist teachers involved in this program at Kittridge Street Elementary School to minimize the time spent in writing the necessary Individualized Education Program reports by developing a simple database to facilitate the documentation and maintaining of the Individualized Education Program for each special education child. __ The MacValley User Group proposal will allow the Specialist teachers working with students in grades K through 5 to spend more time on a one to one basis to address each child's special needs. OBJECTIVES: The primary objective of this proposal is to aid the Specialist teachers who have students with 'special needs'. The Specialist Program, which through a 'pull out' configuration, assists students with specific learning disabilities. Each child has an Individualized Education Program written for his/her specific needs. These Individualized Education Program's are used in regular and special education classrooms as teachers work with these students. The objective of this proposal is to supply the necessary hardware and software to support this proposal to develop a comprehensive FileMaker Pro database for compilation and review of data entered and to do all initial data entry work on each child in the Individualized Education Program. __ The objective of this project is to teach the 20 Specialist teachers responsible for maintaining the Individualized Education Program database to use a blueberry iMac to quickly enter data for each child in a 'database format' for reports and to teach them to import this data into Excel for preparation of graphs and charts to clearly indicate the progress, or restructuring, of the Individualized Education Program to supply each child with disabilities inclusion in appropriate services. __ This will allow the Specialists' teachers to have quick and ready access to the information when discussing the children in the Individualized Education Program with their parents, and other teachers. It will allow the teachers to supply a clear and concise graph using Excel to show the progress, or restructuring necessary, in encouraging terms, to parents about their child's progress in the Individualized Education Program. This proposal will allow simplified frequent updating of the Individualized Education Program which will give each student the most current educational opportunities. An example of the use of this proposal is: A student, upon entering grade school, is tested and found to be lacking in reading skills and reverses numbers. The student will enter the Special Education progam with an Individualized Education Program. The student will be taught a specialized program developed to assist the student in learning basic reading skills at a different level than the student would be learning in a regular classroom. Use of the Individualized Education Program Database will allow the Specialist teacher to accurately track the student's progress through the school year. In parent communication, the Specialist would be able to graph the student progress, thus encouraging both the parents and students in student performance. The User Group Academy grant will allow the MacValley User Group to supply the necessary hardware and software for the primary purchase of equipment for the Specialist teachers and allow the MacValley User Group to implement a training program to complete this proposal. __ The MacValley User Group will achieve the training of the Specialist teachers by structured classes in coordination with the school primary Specialist teacher, Dr. Rosalie Bell, in the training of FileMaker Pro and Excel for the specific purpose of maintaining the database for the children involved in the Individualized Education Program. The training will include instructing the teachers to: Keep a current list of participating students. Keep a current list of Individualized Education Program due dates, Track each student's mastery of skills, Use the computer to communicate frequently and with accuracy to families and regular education classroom teachers regarding the progress of the 'special needs' student, The provision of frequent communication will work as an additional safety net, enabling greater success for Individualized Education Program students. It is anticipated this training will consist of 1 - four hour weekend day of initial instruction and weekly afternoon 2 hour sessions for 5 weeks with follow-up afternoon 2 hour sessions monthly for the next 3 months. __ The MacValley User Group wishes to use this as a pilot program for the Los Angeles Unified School District in aiding Specialist teachers and Special Education teachers in the phenomenal amount of paperwork required to meet the requirements of P.L. 94-142. After the initial purchase of equipment, the MacValley User Group will provide the installation of all software to implement this program. Procedure Upon winning the Grant, the MacValley User Group Grant Program Committee will initiate the purchase of the equipment, and delivery of equipment to the primary set-up site for the installation of software. This process by our volunteer member, Lenny Sachs, is scheduled for 30 to 45 days. He will be installing FileMaker Pro and transferring over the necessary fields to implement the required reporting and database on the students, completely simplifying this procedure with the use of key commands and shortcuts. During this time, the training of the teachers will begin at the Los Angeles Times public building in Chatsworth, Ca. on February 5, 2000 for a beginning class on Macintosh computers. The installation of Excel will take place upon the completion of FileMaker Pro and the computer and printer will be delivered to Kittridge Street Elementary School. After securing the iMac from theft, the process of teaching the teachers will continue on the computer they will be using. __ From the time of initial instruction, the teachers, will be able to contact the MacValley Grant Committee for any emergency questions via telephone or e-mail. Formal classes will start the 4th week of February and commence weekly until the end of March. Monthly classes from April to June will exist to ensure the computer system will be working properly, addressing any needs of the Specialist teachers. __ We will closely monitor this program and to track comments from the participating teachers as to the effectiveness in allowing the teachers more free time to work with the students on a one-to-one basis. The MacValley User Group Grant Program Committee will meet during the summer with our partner school teacher, Dr. Rosalie Bell, to evaluate the proposal effectiveness. Any necessary recommended adjustments to the proposal will be completed during the summer. Kittridge Street Elementary School is a year around school. When this proposal becomes 100% effective, it will be passed on to the Los Angeles Unified School District main office for their consideration of implementation. MacValley Users Group User Group Partner: Daphne Gruberman MacValley Users Group c/o Bob Campbell 13243 Hesby St. Sherman Oaks, CA 91423-2111 What the User Group Academy Grants Board Said: This is the best of all the grants submitted this year. Its depth of insight into HOW to help the teachers and students, as well as what is needed, marks this as a model proposal, and program for other groups and schools to follow. We applaud Daphne and will take great pleasure in promoting this user group and this project as a leader in the community. __ Daphne noted in her proposal packet that the program could be implemented for a sister school as a joint effort for consideration of some additional funds. The board voted 100% to increase the amount by approximately $2,000.00 so that the second school could be added at the launch of the program thereby benefiting many more teachers and students. __ While it is not required of the grant recipient, we certainly hope that the program is fully documented and made available to the UG Academy as a model for other groups to follow. We feel the database and instructions have exceptional potential merit, and could be "packaged" for other user groupsto use as a grants project to implement in their own local schools. << Return to "Grant Winners" or to the UG Academy Grants index ~

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