Teacher's iPad Savvy Earns Tech Leadership Award

Southampton Intermediate School education teacher Jayne Clare has always aimed to keep up with the cutting edge of educational technology.

Now in her 30th year as an educator, the National School Boards Association's Technology Leadership Network has named Clare one of the "20 to Watch" among leaders advancing educational technology, praising her expertise in iPad integration in classrooms and her app review website Teachers With Apps.

"Jayne Clare’s room was once described as 'magical' by a colleague who observed students with multiple learning problems effortlessly navigating technology she had tailored to their needs," NSBA stated.

Clare currently works in the resource room, helping the least handicapped students with their academics. However, for most of her career she worked at the elementary level, and has worked in the past with students who have the most severe disabilities.

“Over the years, I have worked in a multitude of different classroom settings … but always with special needs kids,” Clare said during a recent interview.

Southampton Intermediate School has an iPad program, in which all students in sixth to eighth grade get one of the tablet computers to use in class and bring home at night, and the special education department has its own iPads as well that Clare can tailor to students' needs.

Vice Principal Susan Wright said that today's intermediate school students are digital learners, so using the iPad comes naturally to them.

“It’s a tool — you still need good teachers," Wright said. "Jayne’s a great teacher, and she has the advantage of working with the iPad. It enables them to be more creative.”

Wright was happy to see Jayne acknowledged by the NSBA.  “It’s wonderful when educators get recognized for all that they do," she said. "Educators, in general, go above and beyond for students, and every once in awhile the needle sticks out of the stack."

Before coming to Southampton, Clare worked in the Hampton Bays School District. “At that time, we were using the Apple 2 — big, monstrous kind of computers — and I realized it was a great venue for differentiating instruction," Clare said. "Kids move at different paces, different levels.”

During her time at Hampton Bays, she and a small group of special needs kids recorded the "ground truth reading" weather report with special equipment every morning and submitted it to NASA.

The students were empowered, Clare said, and they also got to be newscasters, delivering the morning announcements and weather report to their classmates.

Clare's first collegiate degree, a bachelor's in art, came from Southampton College. She said she did not know at that point what she wanted to do for a career.

“I finally said, 'I love teaching,'" she recalled. "It’s the only job I've ever had where I’ve never looked at the clock."

She earned her master's degree in special education from C.W. Post, and later went back to the same institution for a second master's, this time in technology.

For her final project for her technology master's, Clare said she worked with a programmer to design an interactive weather quiz, in which fill-in-the-blank questions would be asked in random order. “That’s just when interactivity was coming around,” she said. Students also wrote the questions that were used in the quiz.

That was 17 years ago. She said it is easy to remember exactly how long ago she earned her second master's — it's the same age as her daughter.  “My daughter was born in the middle of it, and I didn’t miss a class,” Clare said.

When her daughter was 6 months old, she began working for Southampton School District.

Clare said that after having three kids, she went back to designing software about five years ago. But then, the iPad was released in 2010. Rather than making typical software, she and business partner Anne Rachel, a retired preschool teacher from the Children’s School, designed four iPad apps.

One of the apps, "ABC Shakedown Plus," for beginning readers, reached the top 20 in the App Store new and noteworthy section, but it quickly fell into obscurity, Clare said.

Clare and Rachel's next move was to start their own app review website in 2010 with teachers in mind, named Teachers With Apps. Apps reviewed include games, interactive books, teaching and learning tools, and more, on topics like early reading, math, music — even preparing for an airplane flight.

“We only review great apps," Clare said. "We don't give anything stars. If you’re not on our site, we may have missed you, or we considered that you weren’t up to par.”

She said they saw a need for a place where teachers and parents could find which apps will be the best for their students and children. Recommendations are divided by age group — from babies and toddlers to high schoolers — and there are also sections for special needs, including occupational therapy, social skills and speech and language.

“We do field test all apps with students before we review them, because you don't know the magic in an app before you hand it to a child," Clare said, "and we do that both inside and out of school and we also tutor.”

Teacher With Apps also runs a Thursday night Facebook group chat with parents, teachers, therapists and developers called EdAppTalk.

For her NCBA Technology Leadership Network recognition, Clare was invited to the 2013 Consortium for School Networking in San Diego March and a Technology Leadership Network in April, also in San Diego, and awarded a software scholarship.