Martin Mullan

Edtech 551 Final Assignment

Fall 2013

Title of Grant

STEM Club Refugees

Needs Assessment Summary

The Dignity for Children Foundation Learning Center believes that poor people must stay in education in order to break the cycle of poverty. Through a closer relationship with the Dignity for Children Foundation Learning Center, Storm City International School can offer more for the refugees and other poor students at Dignity while meeting the needs of the Interact Club, the Eco-Schools initiative, and the impending STEM reforms in the British education system.

Needs Assessment

Need 1: The Eco-Committee lacks the funds necessary to develop an appropriate project that matches the requirements of the “Green Flag Award.”

Storm City International School has a strategic objective of acquiring the “Green Flag Award” from Eco-Schools; the school currently has a Bronze Award. The criteria for the award falls under the following headings: Eco-Committee, Environmental Review, Action Plan, Linking to the Curriculum, Involving the Whole School and Wider Community, Monitoring and Evaluation, Eco-Code, Project Work.

These criteria have multiple sub-sections including:

The school shares good practice and supports others within their Eco-Community (e.g. local Eco-Centers and homes)
The school, for the first application, has completed in-depth work on at least three of the Eco-Schools nine topics, one of which must be energy

Need 2: The student organised Interact group lacks the capability to fully realise their community related objectives.

Storm City International School has a student organised and managed funding group called Interact.

“Interact is a club for young people ages 12-18 who want to join together to tackle the issues in their community that they care most about. Through Interact, the students: (1) carry out hands-on service projects; (2) make international connections; (3) develop leadership skills; (4) have fun!” (Rotary International, 2013).

Interact currently has 44 students from Year 7 to 13; 6% of the student population. This semester Interact is raising funds for Breast Cancer Awareness, and starting in the second semester want to work to improve the lives of students their age in the local community. Interact needs a connection to the local community and has identified the Myanmar refugee children that visit the science department at Storm City International School (described further in Need 4) as worthy subjects of their efforts. Interact’s objective is the enhancement of English language speaking by the refugee children and the other children at the Local School the refugees attend.

Need 3: Storm City International School lacks a formal STEM club or cross-curricular project that includes science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The British Government is in the process of reviewing the GCSE, AS and A Level examinations - the national exams for 16, 17 and 18 year old students in the Britain. A recommendation from Sir Mark Walport, Chair of the Council for Science and Technology (Council of Science and Technology, 2013), suggests that STEM clubs and projects are a vehicle to enhancing the practical skills in students expected by universities.

Enhancing the STEM provision at Storm City International School will pre-empt the changes that are about to affect the teaching of science, technology and mathematics in the UK.

Need 4: The one hour per week contact between the Myanmar refugees and Storm City International School science students does not facilitate the skills acquisition of on-going cooperation, collaboration and communication required to meet the goals of the organising teachers.

Storm City International School is working with the Association of British Women in Malaysia to provide science education to a group of eight Myanmar refugees (ABWMag, March and May 2013). Refugee students visit Storm City International School for one hour per week to use the science labs and interact with our English speaking 6th Form students. Two of the eight refugees want to go to university in England; by interacting with Alice Smith School students (5% of whom will, on average, go to Cambridge University), the refugee students learn from the attitudes of successful international students.

The refugee students are enrolled at the Dignity for Children Foundation Learning Center. Dignity’s mission is “to empower poor children to break the cycle of poverty through quality education to impact generations.” In 2011, Dignity had 156 children in their secondary school. Dignity’s teaching faculty are volunteers and are qualified to teach primary school age students; to provide for their older students Dignity established contact with World Virtual School (WVS), USA to explore the possibility of conducting 4 year online courses based on the US high school syllabus.

Goals and Objectives

Goal: Storm City International School will provide physical (building resources) and technological (tablet 3G capable devices) resources in order to build a joint STEM project permitting the students at Storm City International School and the Dignity for Children Foundation Center to connect more fully with each other to enhance the knowledge, understanding and awareness of each other’s lives, and to enhance the experience of all the students involved in the project.

Need 1: The Eco-Committee lacks the funds necessary to develop an appropriate project that matches the requirements of the “Green Flag Award.”

Objective 1: By 12 months from the receipt of grant funds, the Eco-Committee will design and have installed a Living Wall project that will meet the requirements of the “Green Flag Award.”

Using the funds acquired, the Eco-Committee will employ the services of “Green On Wall”, in environmental installation company, to design a Living Wall for Storm City International School and the Dignity for Children Foundation Center. The Living Walls will use thermal pumps and captured rainwater to deliver water to the plants growing in the framework on the wall. Due to the cooling effect of transpiration - the evaporation of water from the leaves of the plants - the supporting walls of the schools will be cooled. This cooling effect, and the shading caused by the plants, will reduce the need for air conditioning and reduce the electricity expenditure for the buildings.

Funds will be used to buy the equipment needed to create the Living Wall framework, the thermal pumps and the water collectors for both schools. Recycled materials will be sourced and used where possible keeping the cost down and keeping the project in alignment with its environmental goals.

After the design has been completed and the resources purchased, the Eco-Committee will organise for their Eco-Warriors, the STEM students and the Dignity for Children Foundation students to work together after school to build the frameworks. With the assistance and guidance of the on-site maintenance teams, the students will construct the frameworks, pumps and rainwater collectors. The students will seed the frameworks with appropriate plants and maintain the structure after it is completed and self-sustaining.

The Eco-Warrior students will monitor the electricity use in the building, and with the assistance of the science students, use data-loggers to record the temperatures inside the classrooms affected by the Living Wall; the data will be used as evidence for the “Green Flag Award.”

Need 2: The student organised Interact group lacks the capability to fully realise their community related objectives.

Objective 2: Through working with the Science faculty and Eco-Committee over the 12 month period of the project, Interact will generate a sustained relationship with the Dignity for Children Foundation Learning Center, meeting Interact’s four objectives.

The Interact students are highly motivated individuals that enjoy giving up their time to increase the amount of good in the world. Their objectives of carrying out hands-on service projects, making international connections, developing leadership skills, and having fun will all be met by their involvement in the relationship between Storm City International School and the Dignity for Children Foundation Learning Center.

By involving the Interact students, the success of the Living Wall project at the Local School will be much higher as these dedicated students are committed to succeeding in everything they do. The inclusion of the Interact students will bring the Myanmar refugee children and the Local school students into contact with several Alice Smith School students on a pathway to Cambridge or Oxford University. By integrating with our students, the refugee and Local school students will see that they can succeed if they apply themselves as our students do. By interacting with the local community and particularly those less fortunate than themselves, Storm City International School students will develop attributes of leadership, community and humility, preparing them for their lives abroad when they leave school.

Need 3: Storm City International School lacks a formal STEM club or cross-curricular project that includes science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Objective 3: By 12 months from the receipt of grant funds, a STEM club will be incorporated into the extra-curricular activities programme and will work with the Eco-Committee to design and install a Living Wall project.

In preparation for the reforms within the UK National Curriculum, a STEM Club will be incorporated into the Enrichment and Extra-Curricular Activities at Storm City International School. The STEM Club meet once per week and will undertake real projects that are visible in the school and in the community. The organising teachers will aim to identify cross-curricular links that will be the focus of smaller projects that will aim to be completed each half term.

Along with smaller projects, the STEM club will integrate with the Eco-Committee, Eco-Warriors and the science students involved in the collaboration with the Dignity students to develop the Living Wall project. The STEM Club students will focus on the science involved in making the Living Wall function and be sustainable. The students will evidence their work and contributions in a digital portfolio that will be shared within Storm City International School community and with the STEM Club at the Dignity for Children Foundation Learning Center.

The STEM/science organising teachers and Eco-Committee will aim to attract attention to the project through the media. This effort will generate awareness within the international school community to the environmental projects and to the plight of the Myanmar refugees; an increase in fund raising for the Dignity for Children Foundation Learning Center is expected.

Objective 4: Through the use of 10 3G enabled tablet devices during the period of the STEM project, the science and Interact students from Storm City International School will sustain a daily dialogue with the Myanmar refugees and students of Dignity for Children Foundation Learning Center to successfully complete the inter-school STEM Living Wall project.

Currently, students from the Dignity for Children Foundation Learning Center that visit Storm City International School must travel for 1.5 hours to reach the school. Due to their commitments at home, many of the students cannot afford the time to come to the science department at Alice Smith School.

One of the goals of the Association of British Women in Malaysia is to increase the contact of the refugee students with students their own age who will move on to successful universities. The short time available for the students to interact with each other at Storm City International School is a small step toward the sustainable relationships all parties are interested in fostering.

Storm City International School has full Wi-Fi coverage and has two trolleys of iPads available for the students to use for projects where an evidence portfolio is required. By providing 10 3G enabled tablet devices with Maxis prepaid credit, the refugee students and Dignity students will be able to communicate every day after school to discuss how their STEM projects are progressing. Shared documents on Google Drive and Google Sites will allow both groups of students to collaborate and provide evidence of the journeys their projects are taking.

The refugee students will use the telephone functionality of the tablets to communicate their ideas and experiences with the students from Storm City International School. When accessing the internet, the refugee students will use the activated data plan available through Maxis to upload their photos, images and written evidence to the shared Google Site. Using peer assessment techniques and the commenting features available in Google Docs, Storm City International School students will be able to offer suggestions for improvement in the written work produced by the refugee and Local school students.

The two schools will continue their weekly meeting in Storm City International School laboratories. This will further develop face-to-face relationships between the students, offer opportunities for review, and to practise other elements of science.

Budget

Item	Cost per item ($)	No. of items	Total ($)

Google Nexus 7" Asus	349.00	10	3,490.00
Shipping	10.00	10	100.00
Tax	80.27	10	802.70
Insurance/user/year	15.00	10	150.00
Cloudlock/user/year	20.00	10	200.00
Apps (Where's my Droid)	5.00	10	50.00
Maxis 3Gb (12 months)	320.00	10	3,200.00
Sub total ($)	799.27	10	7,992.70

Wood and irrigation system	1,100.00	2	2,200.00
"Green on Wall" Florafelt 12 Pocket	205.00	64	13,120.00
Seeds and flowers	10.00	20	200.00
Liquid Fertilizer/year	200.00	2	400.00
Labour (in house)	50.00	6	300.00
Sub total ($)	1,565.00		16,220.00

Total ($)			24,212.70

The budget is split to represent the two elements of the project; the tablet devices and the Living Wall installation.

The tablet devices will have the standard Google Apps installed. The students at Storm City International School has a Google Apps For Education (GAFE) Gmail account which they can use to access all of the Google Apps products; no extra paid apps are required.

For the duration of the project, each tablet device given to the Dignity school will have an Alice Smith School GAFE account set up and attached to the device. This will allow the safe and private sharing of data between the students within the “walled garden” of the school’s domain.

Every mobile device owned by Storm City International School has a tracking App installed on it to allow the Systems Administrator to track lost or stolen devices; the tablet devices in this project are considered property of Storm City International School and have all the typical security measures normally installed.

The Living Wall installation covers both school campuses and is double what it would cost to build one wall.

Evaluation

Need 1: The Eco-Committee lacks the funds necessary to develop an appropriate project that matches the requirements of the “Green Flag Award.”

Objective 1: By 12 months from the receipt of grant funds, the Eco-Committee will design and have installed a Living Wall project that will meet the requirements of the “Green Flag Award.”

The Eco-Coordinator is a teacher charged with coordinating the activities of the Eco-Committee and the Eco-Warrior students. This teacher at Storm City International School, along with her counterpart at the Dignity school, will monitor and evaluate the progress of the projects at both schools. The Eco-Coordinator and STEM Teacher will work together to record and review:

the number of students attending the clubs at each campus;
photographic evidence of the progress of the living wall construction;
the work the students do and the evidence they gather toward the Green Flag Award; such as temperature readings from data loggers, and electricity usage taken by the Maintenance team inside the buildings on which the Living Wall has been installed.

The Head of Maintenance will evaluate the construction of the walls to ensure safety compliance. Maintenance records will be filed as evidence. A Job Evaluation Form will be completed for the work of the “Green On Wall” vendor. A Job Completion Form will be signed by the Head of Maintenance upon satisfactory completion and copies taken.

The Head of Finance will oversee the spending of funds. Records of Purchase Orders, Receipts, and any communication with the “Green On Wall” vendor will be retained as evidence. A copy of the Job Completion Form and Job Evaluation Form will be retained by purchasing to inform further business with the vendor.

Need 2: The student organised Interact group lacks the capability to fully realise their community related objectives.

Objective 2: Through working with the science faculty and Eco-Committee over the 12 month period of the project, Interact will generate a sustained relationship with the Dignity for Children Foundation Learning Center, meeting Interact’s four objectives.

The student president of Interact will provide weekly reports with written and audiovisual evidence to the Enrichment Coordinator at Storm City International School and the Rotary Club Interact Coordinator. The Enrichment Coordinator will evaluate the input and impact the Interact students make toward the project. The Rotary Club Interact Coordinator will offer guidance as to any further action the Interact students can take to meet their goals.

The ongoing weekly monitoring and review will inform as to whether the activities and intervention achieved by the Interact students meets the needs of Interact and whether the Interact students are providing positive input to the relationship between the schools.

Need 3: Storm City International School lacks a formal STEM club or cross-curricular project that includes science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The Extra-Curricular Activities Coordinator will provide a sign up option for the available activities and generate weekly reports on the attendance of students at the new STEM club.

The STEM Coordinator will report on the projects undertaken by the Eco-Warriors with reference to student generated evidence. The STEM Coordinator will review the quality of the collaborative work generated by the students at both campuses; using the revision history functionality in Google Docs, the STEM Coordinator will be able to review precisely when the students have accessed and edited the documents they are working on. These times can be used to match when the tablet devices are used to access the internet and whether they are being used to complete the project work or not. A weekly review will allow the coordinators from both campuses to maintain appropriate use of the devices.

The STEM Coordinator will provide weekly articles and images to the PR department in order for them to regularly publicise the progress of the project to the school community through the school’s newsletter and the local community through the local media.

The Systems Administrator will gather data usage from each 3G device. Data use costing and projections for future data use will be generated to inform spending. Identification of site access and time spent online by the students will be evaluated monthly and matched to Google Doc access (as mentioned previously). Reports to the STEM teachers at each school will be provided in order to guide any misuse of the devices in regards to sites accessed.

Statements of payments to the 3G provider will be used to evidence the cost of the communication between the schools. These statements will be reviewed monthly to ensure that the spending is appropriate and within the grant limits.

The tablet devices will be delivered to the STEM Coordinator at the Dignity School; a delivery receipt will be signed and copies taken. A list of the device serial numbers and SIM cards will be recorded and used to activate the “Where’s my Droid” App.

The devices will be stored in the locked office of the STEM coordinator at the Dignity school when not in use. Each device will be signed out to a student and signed back in after they are finished each day.

At the end of the project, the Eco-Coordinator and STEM Coordinator will present a full report on the project to the Grantor/Board of Governors as to the success of the project.

References

Council of Science and Technology, (2013). Stem Education in Schools. (Retrieved from: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/230509/13-1131-stem-education.pdf)

Eco-Schools, (2013). Green Flag Award Criteria. (Retrieved from: http://www2.keepbritaintidy.org/ecoschools/applyforanaward/greenflag/greenflagcriteria)

Rotary International, (2013). Interact. (Retrieved from: https://www.rotary.org/en/learning-reference/learn-topic/interact)