District goes online with pilot program - Los Angeles Times
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District goes online with pilot program

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Danette Goulet

NEWPORT-MESA -- By next year, selected Newport-Mesa elementary students

will be doing much of their schoolwork online at a Web site accessible by

their parents and teachers.

This interactive schooling will be part of a pilot program unanimously

approved by the school board Tuesday night for Rea and Newport elementary

schools.

The program, created by a start-up company called Computer Tooter, will

allow students to receive immediate feedback on their work while giving

teachers and parents a better idea about students’ progress.

As students answer problems contained in the online lesson, the program

will immediately say “good job” for a correct answer or, if it is

incorrect, a tutorial will pop up to assist them, said James Riskas, one

of three co-founders and the chief financial officer of Computer Tooter.

Teachers will also be able to immediately see if students have a grasp on

the work. Computer Tooter will diagnose what skills the child has or is

lacking in each subject, Riskas said.

“Teachers can evaluate each child’s strengths and weaknesses on a

real-time basis,” he said. “As soon as the child is done, the information

is available to a teacher.”

Parents will also be able to go online with or after their child is

finished, using a special identification code. Teachers will be able to

determine the level of parent’s involvement by seeing how often parents

visit the Web site.

Computer Tooter is the brainchild of Scott Gayner, whose son suffers from

learning disabilities. At the suggestion of his son’s teacher, Gayner

attempted to find a computer program to help his son, but found that such

a program did not exist.

So, with Robert Small, the third co-founder, they developed a program

that would use technology to assist teachers in better meeting students’

needs.

“It reduces the amount of time a teacher spends grading papers and frees

them up to concentrate on what you really want a teacher to be doing --

teaching,” Gayner said. “It makes them more effective and leaves them

time to access students and do what they need to do for intervention.”

While Computer Tooter is currently negotiating with other school

districts in Orange County, Newport-Mesa has offered the first

contractual agreement.

Teachers from Rea and Newport will begin meeting with programmers from

Computer Tooter this summer to develop Web-based lesson plans to be

incorporated into their day-to-day plans next year.

At Rea, two classes in each of three grade levels -- four, five and six

-- will take part in the program, reaching about 180 students.

Students will be randomly chosen to participate in the first year, said

Rea Principal Ken Killian, but fourth-grade students will continue to

work in the program throughout their remaining years at Rea.

Rea was chosen as the Costa Mesa school to participate because Killian

had already decided to develop a technology academy in an effort to

improve student learning.

“The goal was to significantly infuse technology into our school to see

if it makes a difference in our academic achievement,” Killian said. “The

main purpose is to improve learning for at-risk students, so this was a

real windfall for us.”

One of the selling points of the pilot program was that while it benefits

Newport-Mesa students, it will cost the district nothing.

The new company plans to raise the funds through corporate, institutional

and individual donors, with a proposed budget of $5 million for the first

year of the program.

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