News for Superintendents and Board Members: January 30, 2007
Are Local Cyber School Services Viable?
IU1 is exploring the viability of offering to districts cyber services for students in K-12. Preliminary research indicates school districts are interested in an array of cyber services as opposed to a cyber charter school. As such, the proposed KITS cyber services program would offer students the opportunity to take individual courses or an entire curriculum online. Students would be able to access courses from home or their school. Several school districts have contacted IU1 expressing a strong interest because they see this as a way of keeping their cyber students closer to home and decreasing their cyber school tuition costs.
If sufficient numbers of school districts are interested, IU1 will look to begin offering cyber services for the 2007-08 school year.
IU1 Helps Claysville Get $152,000 in Grant Funding
It is not unusual for rural areas such as Claysville to lack many of the broadband services offered in more urban areas, leaving rural schools, businesses and local governments less tech-savvy in the use of advanced telecommunications applications than their urban or suburban peers. Claysville decided to take a proactive approach to correcting this situation by developing a plan and finding funding to support it.
With assistance from Joanna Mangiapane, Director of Information Services, IU1 and Kevin Dellicker, Dellicker Strategies, Claysville Area Preservation and Revitalization Initiative (CAPRI) applied for and received a Broadband Outreach and Aggregation Fund (BOAF) grant for $152,000.
The grant provides resources for the Claysville Area Preservation and Revitalization Initiative, McGuffey School District and Intermediate Unit 1 to work to improve the availability and inform the community about the advantages of broadband in the greater Claysville area of Washington County.
A Center for Application of Science and Math Skills
Studies tell us that American students need to sharpen their science and math skills if they are going to be able to compete in the future. To support the efforts of our districts to meet this goal, IU1 is researching the development of a regional Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Education Center to serve interested students in Fayette, Greene, and Washington Counties.
With $123,000 in planning support from the Benedum Foundation, IU1 will work with the public schools and area career and technical schools it serves, to identify needs and map out the future for a center that offers students real world (i.e. engineering and technology) application of science and math skills in a manner that is cost effective for the districts.
"Put Me In, Coach…the Classroom That Is"
Coaching can be a very successful means of staff development. The teacher learns without ever leaving the classroom, it addresses real life situations with real life solutions, and most importantly, it gives teachers the opportunity to practice, with guidance, the skills they are learning.
Through a $142,000 Cognitive Coaching and Mentoring Pathways for Educators grant from the Benedum Foundation, IU1 will be helping districts to train teachers to be classroom coaches/mentors.
Through this grant, IU1 will design courses to serve as a pathway for teachers wanting to develop academic coaching/mentoring skills; offer these coaching development courses to educators in IU1 at a reduced rate; purchase resources materials; extend the use of the PA Coaching website; and provide workshop and conference opportunities for trained coaches.
Helping Districts Organize Student Data
Five schools will serve as pilot sites for the IU1 EdInsight Grant. Using $125,000 awarded to IU1 from the Benedum Foundation, IU1 will support these pilot sites as they test the EdInsight Student Information software. The EdInsight software organizes and stores data, enabling administrators and teachers to quickly pull student information from various sources (academic records, tests scores, discipline records, absentee reports, etc.) when they are examining student data. Ultimately the software will link teachers and students to web-based resources that can augment instruction.
