The research comes from an evaluation study, conducted by the International Society for Technology in Education, a nonprofit organization serving educators and education leaders, of an innovative and comprehensive teacher professional development program, Verizon Innovative Learning Schools. A collaboration of the Verizon Foundation and ISTE, VILS is one of the few training programs of its kind focused on supporting the effective integration of mobile technology in the classroom.
VILS provides individualized, on-site and virtual professional development aligned to ISTE Standards, the country’s most commonly-used technology standards describing digital-age learning experiences. The training is tailored to address specific areas for improvement at each school as identified by a preliminary needs assessment. Students and teachers from 24 elementary, middle and high schools across the country participated in the program.
The key findings of the evaluation and research, conducted in January by ISTE, indicate that, in general, students of VILS teachers showed stronger gains in mathematics than students from comparison schools. While many comparison schools used existing mobile technology, they did not participate in any systematic, school wide professional development program focused on using the technology effectively to teach students. Key findings include:
- Standardized test scores in math of students participating in the program increased by 4.13 percent, while the test scores of students in a control group of schools that are using mobile technology but are not participating in the program (and did not receive teacher training on how to use mobile technology) declined by 4.62 percent.
- Teachers in the VILS program reported that 35 percent of their students showed higher scores on classroom assessments; 32 percent showed increased engagement in the classroom; and 62 percent demonstrated increased proficiency with mobile devices.
- Sixty percent of the teachers also reported that by using their mobile devices, they were providing more one-on-one help to individual students, and 47 percent said they are spending less time on lectures to the entire class.
A New Online, Mobile Technology Training Course for Teachers Nationwide
Due to these promising initial results, the Verizon Foundation and ISTE are launching an online teacher professional development program called the Verizon Mobile Learning Academy to enable teams of teachers across the country to participate in mobile technology training through free, moderated virtual courses that will earn participants Continuing Education Units. The program aims to leverage the ISTE Standards to train 1,000 teachers over the next year, beginning this fall.
