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Triangle Coalition Electronic Bulletin
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This Week's Topics:
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| The State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) recently released "High-Speed Broadband Access for All Kids: Breaking through the Barriers," a report that addresses the growing concern and critical need for high-speed Internet access among our districts and schools. Although national statistics boast almost 98% connectivity in US schools, the substance and bandwidth of the connection is often problematic and insufficient. High-speed broadband access and connectivity are vital for economic growth, global competitiveness, education, innovation, and creativity. Ensuring high-speed broadband access for all students has become a critical national issue especially when considering the necessity for the use of technology in assessment, accountability, engagement, and preparing our students for work and life in the 21st century. SETDA worked with stakeholders from all 50 states, education, and industry in developing the recommendations. The report identifies the key issues facing the educational community relating to robust connectivity and recommends how states and districts can successfully implement high-speed broadband in their schools. It also provides stakeholders and policymakers with strategies and models for bringing this critical issue to the national and state policy level. Key recommendations for the next 2-3 years include an external Internet connection to the Internet Service Provider of 10 Mbps per 1,000 students/staff, and internal wide area network connections from the district to each school between schools of at least 100 Mbps per 1,000 students/staff. Further out, the report recommends for the next 5-7 years, an external Internet connection to the Internet Service Provider of 100 Mbps per 1,000 students/staff, and internal wide area network connections from the district to each school between schools of at least 1 Gbps per 1,000 students/staff. The State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) is the principal association for state directors of technology and their staff members providing professional development and leadership around the effective use of technology in education to enhance competitiveness in the global workforce. . |
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| Every year, Vernier Software & Technology and the National Science Teacher's Association present the most resourceful science teachers in the country with the Vernier Software & Technology/NSTA Technology Award. Both are members of the Triangle Coalition. The awards, valued at $3000 each, will be given to seven educators judged to have created the best inquiry-based, hands-on learning activities using data-collection technology interfaced with computers, graphing calculators, and other handheld devices. Up to one elementary teacher, two middle school teachers, three high school teachers, and one college-level educator will receive the technology awards. Each award consists of $1000 in cash, $1000 in Vernier equipment, and $1000 toward travel and expenses for attending NSTA's 2009 National Convention. Entries are due by October 15, 2008 and will be judged by a panel of experts appointed by NSTA. Downloadable applications and guidelines are available on the Vernier web site at www.vernier.com/grants. Educators can be nominated or self-nominated for the awards. "Hands-on activities put scientific concepts into meaningful contexts for students, making the ideas easier to understand and leaving students much more enthused about STEM fields," said David Vernier, co-founder of Vernier and former physics teacher. "This award program not only rewards the ingenious ways in which the winners use data-collection technology to develop those activities, but also showcases the techniques for other educators." Vernier Software & Technology has been an innovator of data-collection technology for 27 years and its products are used in more than 123 countries. Creating easy-to-use and affordable science interfaces, sensors, and software, their products can be found in education from elementary school to college. Vernier helps teachers enhance their science curriculum, increase learning, and build students' critical thinking skills. For more information, visit www.vernier.com. . |
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For small urban high schools to be successful they need to be more than just small, they need to be strategic. A new study, by Education Resource Strategies (ERS), says a smart use of people, time, and money is critical to high student performance. ERS, an organization that studies resource use in urban school districts, examined nine high-performing small urban high schools throughout the U.S. to better understand how they achieved their success. The resulting study, "Strategic Designs: Lessons from Leading Edge Small Urban High Schools," is a detailed look at how very different small high schools organize everything from bell schedules and teacher planning time to staffing strategies and dollar-by-dollar spending on students and teachers. The report, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, found that there is not one way, but rather a strategic way to organize schools. The high performing "Leading Edge" schools in the study don't accept traditional staffing and schedules, but instead proactively manage their resources -- people, time, and money. The findings advance the limited existing research on resource use in secondary schools and demonstrate that it is not just how much money is spent that impacts student learning, but how well the resources are used. The schools ERS studied have clearly defined instructional models and use existing resources to invest in teaching quality, use student time strategically, and create individual attention for students to support these models. At these Leading-Edge Schools: . |
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| Three of the six 2008 JETS/AbilityOne National Engineering Design Challenge (NEDC) finalist coaches have been named Excite Award recipients and Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams finalists: Jeremy Wickenheiser from Edcouch, Elsa High School, Edcouch, TX; Jim Stewart from Garfield-Palouse High School, Palouse, WA; and Scott Grant from Texas Academy of Math and Science, Denton, TX. Excite Awards are given to applicants who have submitted the initial InvenTeam grant application and have been selected to complete the final application. Through a unique partnership established between JETS and the Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams program, NEDC finalist team coaches are automatically offered the Excite Award at the conclusion of the NEDC competition. "JETS goal is to continue fostering the excitement for engineering and give our coaches the opportunity to bring this enthusiasm back into the classroom. The Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams program bridges this gap and continues to be a tremendous value to our educators," says Leann Yoder, JETS executive director. The NEDC is a real-world high school engineering design competition in which teams of students from across the nation design and build an assistive technology device for use by a person with a disability in his or her workplace. The three coaches honored with the Excite Award began working with student teams to compete in NEDC in September 2007. Teams first identified a workplace scenario that currently challenged persons with disabilities. Next, they worked together to solve the challenge by designing, testing, and presenting their devices. Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams is a national grants initiative of the Lemelson-MIT Program to foster inventiveness among high school students. InvenTeams composed of high school students, teachers, and mentors are asked to collaboratively identify a problem that they want to solve, research the problem, and then develop a prototype invention as an in-class or extracurricular project. For more information about Triangle Coalition member, JETS, visit www.jets.org. . |
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A recent survey of U.S. school superintendents conducted by the AASA Center for System Leadership says there are not enough candidates to fill a looming number of school superintendent job openings. The "2007 State of the Superintendency Survey: Aspiring to the Superintendency" contains new data that offer a snapshot of the state of the school superintendency pipeline, incentives and barriers for joining the superintendency, and steps for expanding the pipeline to ensure a high-quality pool of superintendent candidates. Among the findings: . |
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TCEB Sponsors
To find out how your organization can sponsor the TCEB or support the Triangle Coalition in other ways, visit www.trianglecoalition.org/support.htm __________________________________________________________________________ |
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