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July 19, 2005 - Vol. 6, No. 29
TechLearning News
- The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education voted to restore $425 million for the Enhancing Education Through Technology program. Will the funding make it through the full Senate?
- Seventh- and eighth-graders in FL's Palm Beach County will get most of their textbooks in electronic format next year? Would you like digital textbooks for your students?
- Students across Montana will be able to take online courses in the fall from the Montana Schools E-Learning Consortium. Learn about Montana's plans.
- The Toledo Public Schools have seen traditional summer school enrollments drop as students take advantage of online options. Has this happened in your district?
Senate Votes $425 Million for EETT
Technology advocates won another victory along the path of restoring Federal funding for educational technology last week. The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education voted to provide $425 million in funding for the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) program. In May, Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Conrad Burns (R-MT) authored a ýDear Colleague ý letter to Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Ranking Member Tom Harkin (D-IA) of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, HHS and Education, calling for the restoration of EETT funding to the FY04 allocation level of $692 million. Eighteen Senators signed the letter. While the $425 figure falls short of full-funding, it comes close to the $496 million actually appropriated for EETT in FY 2005. When the Bush administration submitted its FY06 budget proposal in February, it zeroed out the EETT program. The House of Representatives then restored $300 million to the project. The funding approved by the subcommittee must still be passed by the full appropriations committee before reaching the Senate floor. If it survives that test, the numbers in the House and Senate bills must be reconciled and technology supporters will have to work hard to fend off efforts by supporters of other programs, also facing cuts, to direct some of the EETT dollars to their own purposes. But at least it now looks like there will be some level of Federal support for educational technology in the FY 2006 budget.
Source: International Society for Technology in Education
Textbooks Move to Digital Format
Districts are increasing pressure on publishers to provide their textbooks in digital format. In most cases, this means that the book is delivered both in print and on CD-ROM, allowing students to leave their textbooks at school and work from the CD-ROM while at home. Some districts are giving their students online access to textbook content. Students who do not have computers at home are given a keep-at-home copy of the textbooks in question. The same is true for students who prefer the print format. While most digital textbooks contain interactive features that can't be reproduced in print, educators say there is little evidence that students learn better in one format or the other. In Florida's Palm Beach County, seventh- and eighth-graders district-wide will get their new civics, American history and world cultures textbooks in electronic format. Most students already get math, science and language arts books in that format. According to the Association of American Publishers, schools spent $7.5 billion on textbooks last year, of which roughly $2 billion was spent on electronic textbooks and other teaching materials.
Source: The Miami-Herald
Montana Embraces Distance Learning
Come fall, the Montana Schools E-Learning Consortium, comprised of 44 Montana public school districts, will begin offering online classes to students across the state. Teachers who will deliver online courses are receiving training this summer from Montana State University's Burns Technology Center. MSU has been involved in the online education since the early 1990's, when it won an NSF grant to expand an existing on-campus summer science institute to the Internet. Over eight years, NSF funding allowed MSU to train some 10,000 teachers, while learning a lot about ways to engage students in online learning. K-12 students can find a listing of online classes to be offered this fall at the Montana Schools E-Learning Consortium Web site (www.mselc.org/). Any Montana student, including private, religious and home school students, can sign up for the Consortium's online classes, most of which will be free. Students must enroll through their local school district, allowing districts to claim a portion of students' enrollment in the head count used to determine how much money school districts get from the state. For every home schooled or private student who signs up for at least two classes, the school district receives funds from the state. The Consortium will also pay districts $500 for each full-year e-learning course a student takes from one of their teachers.
Source: the Bozeman Daily Chronicle
Summer School Goes Online
Online learning is transforming the summer school experience for some students. Rather than sitting in stuffy, hot classrooms, students are taking needed coursework online at the time and place most convenient for them. In the Toledo Pubic Schools, for example, summer school enrollment has dropped, in part because students are doing online classes through the Phoenix Charter Academy. Two hundred students are taking 300 semester hours this summer with the charter academy, while 650 students are attending school-based classes. Before the online courses were offered, nearly 1,000 high school and junior high school students went to TPS classrooms for most of the summer. Roughly 90% of high schoolers taking classes through TPS this summer are retaking a failed course, while 10% are taking a required course, usually physical education, in order to free up time in next year's schedule for an elective. Toledo also has 610 elementary school students attending summer school, nearly half of whom are third graders who attend classes in buildings that mostly have air conditioning.
Source: The Toledo Blade
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