This document provides new insights into events which occurred in a project funded by a Technology Literacy Challenge Fund grant awarded by Michigan Department of Education(MDE) in 2000. One purpose of this document is to update the formal report of the project which introduced new technology for use by low achieving students who are studying in…

How can children lead productive and satisfying lives in the 21st century if school teachers are having them use technology from the 20th century? The hallmark of the 21st century global workplace is the computer. According to a recent Pew Internet and American Life Project study, "The Digital Disconnect: The Widening Gap between…

This study reports on a district-wide research-based professional development (PD) that included 207 teachers and administrators. Data were collected from pre/post surveys, content analysis of the participants' wiki pages, and a follow-up questionnaire. Findings indicate that participants significantly improved their foundational and technical…

A 2006 ECAR study defined cyberinfrastructure as the coordinated aggregate of "hardware, software, communications, services, facilities, and personnel that enable researchers to conduct advanced computational, collaborative, and data-intensive research." While cyberinfrastructure was initially seen as support for scientific and…

This report introduces educators to Moodle, an open-source software program for managing courses online. It briefly defines what Moodle is, what it can do, and gives specific examples of how it is being implemented. An appendix contains brief profiles of five school organizations that are using Moodle.

This article discusses the rise of online learning and describes how educators in Michigan are doing their part to harness the power of online learning to transform today's high school students into lifelong learners, a key component of students' long-term success in the global economy. The author urges schools to prepare for the growing demand in…

Most educators, parents, and policymakers think of "online learning" as a subset of distance learning (where the students and teacher are geographically separate), in which content delivery and communication are achieved primarily through the use of computers connected by the Internet. However, online learning can be either distance…

The major focus of this paper is school teachers' integration of educational technology in their curriculum. Single studies made in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Florida will be examined and a more complex study made in Michigan, Tennessee, Illinois, Montana, California, and Massachusetts which were later implemented among the Model School…

This exploratory study examines the impact of a professional development program where a K-16 networked learning community approach was implemented to provide training and support for technology integration in science education. The study presents findings from a three-year project with five cohort groups that included 17 student teachers, 17…

Clearly, writing works differently online. How it is produced, how it is distributed, how it is accessed, how it is read--all of these processes are changed when writing becomes virtual. However, the processes we use to write at "the print interface" and the ways we read print documents are not obsolete by any means--but they certainly…

This article describes the Michigan Teacher Technology Initiative, a program currently being implemented that provides a one-time investment (not to exceed $1,200) of technology to teachers. Professional development courses that teach general and special education teachers strategies for integrating technology into the curriculum are also…

A survey of Michigan's teacher preparation institutions sought to determine the extent of current and projected technology integration in teacher preparation programs. A questionnaire asked about faculty development, curriculum modification, hardware and software acquisition, and resource needs. Results indicated a vast variation in technology…

The 2002 National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) Distinguished Achievement Awards, sponsored by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), were awarded to six teacher education programs across the United States. The awards recognize institutions that exemplify successful integration of the National Educational…