A Plan Without a Plan
By Geoffrey H. Fletcher
Sometime this year, the federal government, through your state's department of education, will be asking you how many eighth-grade students in your district have been determined to be technologically literate. (The exact formation of the questions to be used in the collection of this information is not final.) This is thanks to Title II-D of the No Child Left Behind Act—Enhancing Education Through Technology—which has as one of its goals: "To [ensure] that every student is technologically literate by the time the student finishes the eighth grade, regardless of the student's race, ethnicity, gender, family income, geographic location, or disability."
When NCLB was signed by President Bush in 2001, the federal DoE told state educational technology directors and state DoEs that they would not be required to collect data associated with EETT's technological literacy goal. That policy stayed in effect until this past summer, when the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) informed the Education Department that it must now begin to gather data on student tech literacy. Data will be collected for the 2006-2007 school year, even though the terms of the data requirement have not been finalized...
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Ed Tech News
JASON to Provide New Curriculum, Professional Development to DoD Teachers and Students
The JASON Project, a nonprofit subsidiary of the National Geographic Society, is now providing curriculum and on-site and online professional development for Department of Defense (DoD) schools worldwide under the terms of a contract signed last month...
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Valence Batteries Power Hybrid School Buses
Students may soon be traveling to school in a fuel-efficient bus using Valence Technology Inc. batteries...
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NetPrep Partners with Stanford to Give Detroit Students Free Online Tutoring, Computers
NetPrep, the web-based after-school tutoring program for students in grades 2-8 who qualify for Supplemental Educational Services (SES), has formed a unique partnership with Stanford University’s Education Program for Gifted Youth (EPGY) to provide...
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Products & Services
Fujitsu Introduces New Color, Production-Level Scanner
Fujitsu Computer Products of America Inc. has introduced the Fujitsu fi-4860C2 VRS scanner into its award-winning line of document-management scanners...
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Pearson Launches New Version of WriteToLearn
Pearson Knowledge Technologies has recently launched an updated version of WriteToLearn, a web-based learning tool that helps students develop writing and reading comprehension skills...
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Case Study
Technology for Tots
By Denise S. Averill
Over this past summer, I had the pleasant and enriching opportunity of working as a kindergarten teacher at the Lily Pond Country Day School in River Vale, NJ, where integrating computers daily for 5-year-olds took place through the Internet and Kid Pix software. I would like to share what I observed.
In June, I stepped away from the third-grade arena and entered the world of kindergarten, not knowing exactly what to expect. I had seen how beneficial adding technology to the course curriculum for those in second and third grades was, and I wondered if kindergartners would benefit as well.
Here are some questions I asked myself before I embarked on my venture this summer: Can I integrate technology into the kindergarten class? Can the students learn computers at such a young age, and will they retain what they learn? The answer was a big YES to all the questions that went swirling around my head. Computers are cognitive tools that are just waiting to be employed. We learn
with the computer, not
from the computer, and that is the idea that all educators, parents, and students must first understand...
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Web Notes
Rand McNally Brings Geography to Life Through New Online Educational Service
With Geography Awareness Week (Nov. 12-18) just around the corner, Rand McNally has combined its 150 years of geographic and education expertise with the power and convenience of the Internet to introduce schools to the ultimate geography teaching tool...
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Texans Can! Launches Site Celebrating the Success of Students, Graduates
Texans Can!, the parent organization of public charter schools serving at-risk youth, has revamped its website to focus on the success of its students and graduates...
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Events Calendar
THE Journal Opportunities
Share Your Best Practices
T.H.E. Journal is currently looking for the following types of articles for future issues and for our eNewsletter, T.H.E. SmartClassroom:
- School Perspectives - discuss a specific topic, trend, or concern about education technology.
- Case Studies – have you implemented technology and learned a lot from the experience? If so, share your efforts about what worked -- and what didn't.
If you have a potential article, or questions about the above topics, please e-mail [email protected]
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