Brownstown receives $50,000 Digital Learning Grant

Goshorn

BROWNSTOWN — The Indiana Department of Education offers a Digital Learning Grant.

That gives school corporations the opportunity to lead and support work that is focused on appropriate practices for blended and virtual learning in the areas of supporting teachers new to the field with blended and virtual learning implementation, Universal Design for Learning, assistive technologies and digital literacy.

This year, in its continued efforts to provide funds to expand technology integration at school corporations, the IDOE’s Office of Digital Learning announced the 45 grant recipients.

Among them is Brownstown Central Community School Corp.

Lindsey Goshorn, the corporation’s special education director, said this is the second Digital Learning Grant she has applied for and been awarded. The corporation also received $50,000 for the fall 2022 grant cycle.

“Most of those funds have been used to create our own assistive technology library and provide training opportunities for teachers and staff,” she said. “The work that we have been doing with PATINS in our two years as an AEMing for Achievement Team has raised awareness and identification of assistive technology needs for our students.”

She said PATINS has a wonderful lending library staff members have used to borrow assistive technology equipment and tools to try with different students based on their needs.

“We found that we weren’t always able to collect enough data or have enough time to monitor student progress using these items before we had to return them,” Goshorn said. “We were able to purchase a variety of items that we now have on hand for immediate use and will be able to trial equipment with students for a longer period without having to return it.”

The assistive technology library includes devices and apps that can be used for communication, switches and buttons, switch-adapted toys and games, adaptive keyboards and mouse options, flexible seating options, sensory items, fidgets and personal sound amplification systems, among other things.

“Teachers will have access to view the inventory and be able to request items for individual students or classroom use,” Goshorn said. “We partnered with the Indiana IEP Technical Assistance Center to provide training opportunities addressing Universal Design for Learning, executive functioning, differentiation, co-teaching and inclusive practices.”

Goshorn said this year’s grant will continue to address supporting Universal Design for Learning with further training opportunities for teachers and staff as well as purchasing additional assistive technology, including classroom FM systems. Those can be used to help eliminate background noise and project the teacher’s voice so they can be heard louder and clearer by all students in the classroom setting.

She said the training opportunities that will be offered will give staff a chance to increase their understanding of UDL and implement this framework in their classroom.

“The teachers who will be equipped with an FM system will have the potential to see increased student attention, improved behavior and a boost in academic progress,” Goshorn said. “These teachers will also be able to reduce strain to their voice using the sound system.”

Training opportunities will be offered to teachers and staff in all three of Brownstown’s school buildings.

“There will be some classrooms/teachers in each of our schools equipped with FM systems using these funds; however, we will not be able to provide a system for all of our teachers with the proposed grant budget,” Goshorn said.

For students, UDL is a framework to guide the design of learning environments to reduce barriers so all learners have equal access and can engage meaningfully, she said.

“While our students with special needs may have added barriers that other students do not, increasing the implementation of UDL in our classrooms will be beneficial to all students,” Goshorn said.

The classroom FM systems will not only benefit students with hearing impairments but also emergent readers, those with auditory processing disorders and students with ADHD.

“Research has indicated that classroom FM systems can contribute to increased student focus, better ability to discriminate words and spoken language more accurately and improved scores in early literacy,” Goshorn said.

Having received the Digital Learning Grant for two years in a row, Goshorn said it has given the corporation the chance to think outside the box and offer innovative resources to students that they may have only dreamed about without having the funding provided.

“I am extremely grateful that IDOE provides these opportunities to school corporations in Indiana, and we have been fortunate to be chosen as a participating corporation,” she said. “As long as the opportunity exists and we continue to have ideas that fit within the guidelines, I anticipate that we will proceed with future applications for this grant and other grant possibilities that are offered.”