The focus of the Cameron County Edutech Consortium's application for TIE funding is educator preparation and development. As schools within this consortium strive to prepare our children for the 21st century, integrating educational technologies throughout the entire educator preparation and development program is a critical issue. The tremendous cost of training and retooling is overwhelming for most school districts. By sharing our expertise, training, and support of technology integration, collectively we can provide a very cost-effective means of supporting educator preparation and development. This grant will reach out to all educators including teachers, library media personnel, administrators, and support personnel for grades Pre-K - 12.
If our application for this grant proves successful, it will provide the resources to develop a training lab at each school district, private school and Literacy Center. The training lab at each district will include the following components:
Minimum 200 Mhz Pentium multimedia computers
Smart Board
Video/Data Projector
Compressed Digital Video Units (Video Conferencing)
Staffing for each lab will be a combination of consortium expertise; contracted trainers from UTB, TSTC and Region I; and a consortium trainer that will float between districts.
Courses that will be included in all labs include:
Windows 95
MS Word
MS PowerPoint
MS Excel
MS Access
Kid Pix Studio
HyperStudio
These courses will be offered via Compressed Digital Video (CDV), Web-based courses, and videotape. The courses listed above are divided into three levels of computer literacy competencies.
This grant will allow our consortium to effectively connect and collaborate as we all face the challenge of acquiring the knowledge and skills necessary to prepare our students to be responsible, productive citizens in the 21st century.
Initiatives