IPI and IPI-T Growth...  As we leave 2017 in the rear-view mirror and look toward 2018, the use of the IPI Process continues to spread across the US and beyond.  The IPI is in its twenty-second year and the IPI-Technology Component its eighth year.   

In the past year schools from Maine to Hawaii have begun to implement the IPI and the IPI-Technology Processes.   We are approaching approximately 28,000 educators who have completed the basic IPI Level I Workshop.  The basic IPI has been implemented in more than half of the US states as well as the Sydney region of Australia.  Like the basic IPI Process, the IPI-T process also grows at a fast pace...actually a pace faster than the early years of the basic IPI Process.  As we enter 2018, nearly 1000 educators who have implemented the basic IPI Process have completed the IPI-T Workshop, thus obtaining permission to use the more sophisticated IPI-T Process. 

The IPI-Technology is an advanced process designed specifically for schools that are “one-to-one” (1:1) or at least high-tech schools looking toward full implementation of 1:1.   To use the IPI-T Process a school must first use the IPI Process because the transition to the IPI-T is more sophisticated than the basic IPI Process and the learning curve for the IPI Team and faculty is higher.   However, the data provided by the IPI-T Process are much richer.   

In the basic IPI Process the school’s student engagement profile provides for the faculty the percentage of time students are engaged in each of the six IPI student engagement categories.  And once a school has become familiar with the analysis of those data, the school can readily expand the profile to include data analysis by content area, grade level (for elementary and middle schools), and class period (for middle and high schools).   Data disaggregation by those factors allows faculty to study both their school-wide data and data that may be more pertinent to the student they specifically serve.   

In the IPI-Technology Process the data charts provide the same information to faculty as described in the above paragraph as well as analyses of how student who are using technology are thinking when they are using technology as part of their instructional activity.  The IPI-T data also provide faculty with an understanding of how their students are using technology (e.g. to do word processing, math computations, media development, information search, electronic collaboration, an experience-based immersive activity, or an interactive or presentation tool that supports the transfer of information to students and among students and teachers).  The IPI-T data process also provides student “head counts,” thus allowing faculty better identify the number of students who are engaged in specific forms ot thinking as sorted by the IPI student engagement categories.  And for the faculties who want to drill-down even more into their students’ engagement, tables cross-reference the data so faculty can understand student thinking across a multitude of variables.  

Jerry Valentine

January 2018