District/School Administration PK-16 Program Support
Educational Technology

1998 EdTech Update Report

Project MEET

A description of the five year, $10,000,000, Federal grant to provide technology professional development to 85% of Massachusetts teachers. This system, consisting of teaching, support, and policy, will promote the use of on-line technology for teaching and learning. For more information contact Connie Louie.

Project MEET will build on existing state initiatives to create a statewide collaborative of nationally recognized organizations to provide technology professional development to Massachusetts educators.

Massachusetts has committed itself to provide technical professional development to 85% of Massachusetts educators and enable 50% of those educators to become proficient in using technology as a tool to improve student learning consistent with the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks. Project MEET provides an essential step towards this goal through a three-tiered systemic approach: Teaching, Support, and Policy.

Teaching - training teams of teachers in the use of technology as a tool to strengthen their curriculum and raise the achievement of ALL students.

Support - developing the leadership, curriculum integration and planning skills of technology professional development (TPD) specialists, who will support teachers.

Policy - identifying policy issues raised by technology, and recommending and advocating for proposed solutions.

Project MEET's technology emphasis will be on the use of on-line technology for teaching and learning. Emphasis will be placed on an understanding and implementation of the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks. The inter-relations of disciplines will be underlined, and technology will be framed as an effective tool for interdisciplinary project-based learning. In order to be responsive to the needs of diverse learners, particular attention will be given to issues of universal design and assistive technology. Progress will be quantified and qualified in five research and development sites.

The design of this project requires that the teachers enrolled are not beginners. Instead, they have been users of technology themselves, and are ready to focus their attention on the curriculum applications of technology, rather than technology per se. This project views teacher proficiency under the following stages:

Stages of Technology Acquisition

Stage 1: Entry - Teachers begin to use basic applications for personal productivity and classroom presentations.

Stage 2: Initial Integration - Teachers are using a variety of applications and make technology available to students.

Stage 3: Integration -Teachers are using technology for communication and research, and integrate these uses into the content areas.

Stage 4: Invention and Innovation - Teachers use technology as a tool for implementing new strategies in their teaching of the content areas.

This project has been funded through the Technology Innovation Challenge Grant Program, under the U.S. Department of Education. It is a five-year project and the following table indicates the award periods:

Principal Investigators:

David Driscoll,
Commissioner (Interim),
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

Peter Negroni,
Superintendent, Springfield Public Schools

Selma Botman,
Vice President for Academic Affairs, University of Massachusetts

Collaborative Partners:
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
WGBH
TERC
CAST, Inc
Institute for Community Inclusion
Mass Networks Education Partnership, Inc.
The Board of Higher Education
Chicopee Public Schools
Lowell Public Schools
Pittsfield Public Schools
Springfield Public Schools
New England Adolescent Research Institute
MassCUE

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