Everett School District, located in Everett, Washington, serves a population of almost 20,000 students.
Everett Public Schools' mission is to inspire, educate, and prepare students to achieve high standards, contribute to the community, and thrive in a global society. Everett Public Schools invests in technology to equip its staff and students with resources that strengthen teaching and learning.
Barb Lark is a retired Speech and Language Pathologist and Assistive Technology Specialist with Everett School District.
Challenge
In addition to her roles at Everett School District, Barb also volunteers with the Special Education Technology Center (SETC) of Washington. SETC provides training, an assistive technology lending library, and consultation services to help connect parents and educators with appropriate assistive technology to support preschool through 12th-grade students with disabilities.
Years ago, Barb attended a conference seeking an EdTech solution for students who had trouble with writing and language processing. “I was looking at our children with the greatest challenges. I wanted a way for them to be able to express themselves in writing. These are students with significant challenges in language, with cognitive challenges, and with physical challenges,” Barb shared.
Everett School District was looking for a solution that was:
- easily customizable,
- allowed switch access, and
- built home and school connections.
“I heard about Crick Software’s Clicker at ‘Closing the Gap’ and was really impressed with it."
Solution
“I was able to look at it through the special education and general education lens with our tech department to see how it would meet the needs of our students. As an assistive tech facilitator, I created a lot of writing templates that could easily be used by staff and changed on a routine basis.”
After the conference, Barb went back to the tech department and found that they had already purchased a school bundle that included Clicker. The district would have unlimited access to the software, enabling all students up to fifth grade to utilize the tools.
Barb and other district educators were excited about the broad access to Clicker.
When Everett School District stopped purchasing computers with software bundles, they still obtained Clicker for their Life Skills classrooms. They’ve since had Clicker available for Life Skills classes at all grade levels.
Outcomes
Clicker has been a transformative tool for many students at Everett School District. Its assistive features facilitate extended writing and help to develop literacy skills for students at all levels.
“It’s a literacy tool that allows for immediate expression of ideas. It allows children to go from stock answers to broader self-expression,” Barb stated. “For students with learning challenges, it allowed access that they otherwise wouldn’t have had. It allowed them to access independent reading materials. It allowed them to express themselves in writing, in a way they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to do. We had it way before we had a lot of AAC (augmentative and alternative communication) systems available to kids, so it was a powerful tool for those kids to have a voice.”
Barb shared an anecdote about her volunteer role for SETC, “One of the things I’ve been able to do in my volunteer role is provide templates. In one of the buildings, they have ongoing themes for the whole building. For one theme, students wrote “I wonder…” essays. Clicker provided my student with the ability to participate. I made some templates and went through various exercises and examples with my student so she could communicate. Clicker provided her with the opportunity to participate that well exceeded her ability to write, due to her extensive physical needs.”
Barb realized that as long as they provided the appropriate level of scaffolding within Clicker, students were eager to complete the work. Also, they were excited to bring their work home to share with their families. The students felt like they were a more integral part of their school community with this technology. Clicker helped to create a fully inclusive environment and its impacts transcended the classroom
Additional benefits
Barb noted that training is key to integrating any EdTech in schools. “You want training that meets the specific needs of classrooms,” Barb asserted. “Training that reflects the environment, rather than general training.”
Barb found Crick Software to be extremely responsive when it comes to training. She shared that she initially received training at the state level from one of Crick’s Education Consultants, who helped her learn and apply the platform.
After that, Everett School District provided professional development led by Barb and a general education teacher, who were able to train:
- general education teachers,
- special education teachers, and
- paraeducators.
“The classrooms where both teachers and paraeducators were trained were where Clicker was most widely used. Everyone was really motivated to do it.”
Are you ready to empower your students with Clicker? Schedule a free consultation with us now to unlock more equitable learning opportunities for all students.