Generating Equal Access to Remote Areas in Tennessee: A case study
Jerry Bates, Director of Applied School Technology for the Tennessee Department of Education, and two of Tennessee's Technology Coaches signed up for a program offered through a partnership of the Southern Regional Educational Board (SREB) and Education Development Center (EDC), to expose participants to online learning. Through partial funding from the AT&T Foundation, supplemented by funding from several local state departments of education, seventy-six participants from eleven states participated in EDC's EdTech Leaders Online (ETLO) semester-long training program on online professional development. Based on the success of this program, Jerry Bates and the Tennessee Department of Education developed the EdTech GEAR (Generating Equal Access to Remote areas in Tennessee) grant funded through Title IID of the NCLB legislation, as a way to build and expand the use of online professional development in the state.
Initially, the three representatives from Tennessee were, in Jerry's words "cynics" about online learning since they had experienced great success in using face to face training and didn't think that online learning was going to be a satisfactory fit for their state. Through their participation in the ETLO program, their minds were changed - so much so in fact that Jerry Bates is launching a capacity building program for Tennessee based on the SREB model and using ETLO workshops.
During the semester-long training course, Jerry and her colleagues were struck by the quality of the course structure and the readings and materials that were assigned. The courses, Jerry noted, had substance and the readings and activities were engaging, interactive and relevant. While reading, reflecting and sharing their ideas in the asynchronous, online discussion, Jerry and her colleagues noticed that a vibrant community had developed between them, the facilitator, and the educational technology representatives from the other states. The three from Tennessee came away from the ETLO training with a sense that online professional development was a viable option for their state and that they made plans to pursue it further.
After her ETLO experience, Jerry saw online professional development as a means to achieve the two goals of Tennessee's GEAR grant program: 1) to build local capacity for high-quality ongoing professional development in technology integration, especially in remote areas and 2) to use online professional development to promote effective use of technology in classroom instruction. One third of Tennessee's schools are classified as rural and they serve one quarter of the state's students.
One of the challenges schools face, and rural schools in particular, is complying with No Child Left Behind legislation that requires schools to use 25% of the federal Title IID funds for ongoing sustained professional development in technology integration. While there are some districts in Tennessee with professional development programs in place to meet this requirement, many do not have the money, resources, or access to providers to offer sustained professional development for their teachers in technology integration.
At the end of the fiscal year, Jerry decided to use remaining funds from her Title II grant to offer fourteen scholarships to district-nominated educators to build capacity throughout Tennessee. Once the participants had completed the ETLO training course, they would be required to facilitate two online workshops on technology integration for other educators in their districts, partnerships and neighboring districts. Using this model, by the end of the 2004 school year, Tennessee had 17 trained online facilitators (including Jerry and the original technology coaches). Each online facilitator taught at least 2 courses for teachers in their district for a total of 350 teachers having access to online professional development.