Overall Goal:

Project Integrate is a TIE 2000 grant initiative to implement a model of advanced integration professional development designed to 'change' teacher behaviors and develop 'practitioners' who are fully integrating technology into their classroom teaching and learning. This project and model were successfully implemented as a TIE 1999 grant in McAllen ISD, San Benito CISD, Grapevine-Colleyville ISD, and Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD.

Specific Objectives:

1 - to train a core group of educators (probably 6 teachers, 1 admin. & 1 other) from every campus to become practitioners of technology integration

2 - to train trainers to deliver these unique integration workshops so that after the grant year, this integration staff development model can continue for other educators in future years

note: teachers are expected to become practitioners of technology integration and to continue those practices in subsequent years (i.e. it is not their responsibility to train other teachers - that is why trainers will also be trained to redeliver the workshops in subsequent years).

Grant Participants & Funding:

This initiative will involve four of five larger districts (over 10,000 students) in the Houston and ESC VI regions, and also many smaller & medium size districts in ESC VI.

Funds from the grant would be used to pay for the two critical elements related to integration staff development: trainers to deliver workshops and teacher release time (substitute pay if during school or teacher duty pay if outside of school times - $80 per day). Some funds would also be used for project evaluation and the fiscal agent district.

What the initiative would involve:

Train-the-Trainers (July-August): 4 days of intensive training to develop the skills of trainers to deliver some of the integration workshops (and 2 follow-up days for trainer consulting)

Participant Identification (August): principals will select a core group of teachers and administrative/instructional support staff from each campus (probably 8 people from campuses/districts with 400 to 1000 students, or fewer from smaller campuses)

Series of Integration Workshops (Sept-Mar): participants will be involved in 3 different two day integration workshops (Mac OS or Windows - various types of software)

Technology & Curriculum Integration (2 days in Sept-Oct): word processing based

Multimedia & Curriculum Integration (2 days in Nov-Jan): hypermedia based

Internet & Curriculum Integration (2 days in Jan-Mar): web publishing based

Evaluation: probably by SEDL or TCET

Eligibility: all ESC VI districts are eligible to participate, but districts/schools will be chosen based on whether they have technology in classrooms (as opposed to computer labs only). Note, this is designed for all teachers (not just the advanced 'techies'), but the teachers do need technology in their classroom to implement the integration lesson plans and practices.