Characteristics+of+Program

The purpose of this proposed program is to improve K-12 learning by helping in-service and pre-service teachers to better understand and use ICT in their classrooms. In doing so, the program will create communities of practice that include people (whether pre-service teacher, in-service teacher, university faculty, school administrators) who are advanced technology users as well as people who are relatively new to technology. The communities of practice will help to determine the kinds of professional development that would be useful within local contexts; this professional development will be delivered or preserved (in the case of in-person professional development) so that all people in the project (pre-service and in-service teachers) can benefit from it whether or not they could physically attend.



In addition to these practices, the program will implement the use of no-cost software and other workarounds so that all classrooms will have access to continually-updated software at no cost to the school districts. All activities will be planned with the idea of how they might fit into teachers' lives, using asynchronous communication and learning via distance learning strategies to make information and ideas easily available.