Annual Report (November 2007)

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Buddy Mission Statement
Buddy develops and facilitates leading edge learning projects in K-12 school communities to increase student achievement using technology in anytime, anywhere settings. Buddy initiatives aim to share best practices among educators, strengthen family involvement in education, and extend learning beyond the bounds of school time and place. Buddy values and supports equal access to learning technologies regardless of socioeconomic realities.

The Buddy System Project began in 1988 by providing home technology to 250 families and teacher training in five school communities through a partnership of public and private institutions. Since that time, Buddy has served over 60,000 students in one or more Buddy initiatives. Buddy has provided programming, special project facilitation and training services to more than 15,000 educators from all 92 Indiana counties through its grants, professional development center, outreach training programs and conferences. Buddy’s award-winning website, http://www.buddyproject.org, provides free teaching and learning resources to over 1,700 visitors daily.¹ Buddy programs, projects, services and publications each express one or more of its original core values:

• Learning opportunities beyond classroom time and place;
• Technology as a tool to support learning goal achievement;
• Parent involvement in the education of their children;
• Equal access to technology resources for all students and teachers; and
• Reflective practice of teaching and learning for continuous improvement.

The Corporation for Educational Technology, established in 1991, to administer the Buddy Project and support other Indiana Department of Education technology-based programs, has enjoyed the support of the Indiana General Assembly since that time. Statewide economic crises and significant state budget cuts sharply reduced its ability to fund major school or home technology grant programs. Buddy has, however, responsibly used its small budget² to develop training programs and support materials accessible to all Indiana educators, students and parents. Perhaps more importantly, Buddy continues to provide leadership and guidance to Indiana schools in making appropriate choice and use of educational technologies for increased student engagement and toward improved academic achievement.

The Writing Site: Launched in mid 2005, this site was developed by Buddy to address an expressed need (IDoE, Indiana schools) for a comprehensive resource to assist teachers in writing instruction and assessment. At that time, Buddy was completing a 5-year research and development program focused on writing skill development at grades 3 through 8. The project developed quality classroom instruction strategies, leveraged by use of home-based technology and family involvement to drive attention to writing skill development.³ As part of the R&D effort Buddy collected over 10,000 writing samples that were used as a base to develop an interactive scoring tutorial and exemplars for use by all Indiana teachers and students at www.thewritingsite.org. In 2006-2007 Buddy expanded the tutorial to include practice sets for the full K-12 spectrum and added site content that supports quality instruction philosophies, strategies and tools for all grade levels. Through targeted promotion and training exposure of the site’s features, usage has significantly increased over the past year as is shown by the charts below.

Each September, teachers and students prepare for the ISTEP+ standardized test, which includes a writing performance test that is assessed against Indiana’s Writing Applications and Language Conventions rubrics. The interactive tutorial at The Writing Site uses real student writing samples and provides specific feedback regarding the assessment by Indiana ISTEP+ rubrics. Since the site’s inception, this feature has rapidly become a favored preparation tool for the applied writing skill test by Indiana educators. A companion to The Writing Site and a mechanism to develop original content for the site is Buddy’s quarterly newsletter, Write Connections, delivered in three versions for primary, elementary or secondary teachers. Individual subscriptions have doubled from 500 in September 2006 to over 1,000 in September 2007. The newsletter features strategies and suggestions for writing instruction across the curriculum as well as ideas to increase family involvement in the supporting instruction at home. Article contributions from Indiana teachers are encouraged.

Buddy Teaching and Learning Center (BTLC): Buddy has maintained a training center since 1995, first hosted by Butler University College of Education, then by the Central Indiana Education Service Center, and now (as of October 2007), by MSD Decatur Township. The BTLC (http://www.btlc.org) serves teachers from all Indiana counties through three integrated services:

• BTLC onsite classes — 404 teachers in 2006-2007
• BTLC regional training (offered at regional education service centers) — 365 teachers (06-07)
• BTLC outreach training (offered at individual schools & districts) — 350 teachers (06-07)

During 2006-2007 the BTLC trained over 1,100 Indiana educators,⁴ grades K-12, in support of technology integration instruction in all content areas. In all cases, trainees are encouraged to return to their districts and share their learning with colleagues.

CampMoodle 2007: Moodle⁵ is free web server software that provides a course framework for teachers to manage classroom and online resources or full courses of instruction. Buddy responded to the oft-heard request for more intensive training opportunities for Indiana teachers to develop Moodle-based resources. Buddy used its mini-grant funds (nearly $80,000 for the biennium) to provide professional development grants that supported 53 Indiana educators from 30 schools in 25 school corporations with the opportunity to spend a full week developing courses for use during 2007-2008. These training camps, held in Indianapolis in July and early August 2007, served 70 educators from Indiana schools, and included options for university credit or CRUs to meet licensing requirements.

The following initiatives are currently underway or are planned for implementation in 2007-2008:

• Moodle core resources — develop course templates, activities, test item banks, etc. supportive of Indiana Academic Standards and make them easily accessible
• Et Cetera — Monthly e-newsletter for Indiana educators to inform about educational best practices, grant and professional development opportunities
• Website: www.buddyproject.org — Redesign and expand to cover full PreK-12 grade levels spectrum promoting appropriate technology integration in all content areas
• Technology Skill Assessment — work with IDoE and other stakeholders to investigate issues and implement improved assessment of student technology skills

Buddy will continue to serve Indiana citizenry with quality training, publications and web-based resources of benefit to the educational growth of Indiana teachers, students and their families in the coming year.

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¹ Data from WebTrends monthly report for September 2007 – Average daily visits for that month were 1,786.
² Since 2001, Buddy has received just $825 K per year, down from $1.5M in annual funding during the 1990’s.
³ Major achievement gains were noted when schools, teachers and students frequently and deliberately practiced writing. See annual reports from 2003 through 2006 for achievement data of this project.
⁴ Attendance statistics are for July 2006 through June 2007 at single day workshops and multi-day institutes.
⁵ Moodle is the registered trademark of the Moodle Trust and Martin Dougiamas. Software may be downloaded and used at no charge for non-profit educational purposes.