Summer 2002

As the university academic and public school year comes to a close, the “Ready to Teach” partners and staff feel that there were many successes during year 2 of RTT. As we look ahead to year 3, there is still much work to be accomplished in order to sustain our efforts after the grant period draws to a close.

We concluded the year with two afternoons of Design Team Showcases. On May 29, we hosted the three teams from Methuen; Comprehensive Grammar School Grade 7, Southeast Asia and Grade 8, Genetics and Methuen High School, Grade 10 Vietnam War curriculum units. On June 3, we had the Butler School, Lowell, Grade 7, Graphing Calculators and the Byam School, Chelmsford, Grade1 Weather and the Westlands and Byam Schools, Chelmsford, Grade 4 Industrialization and Immigration curriculum units. The projects and collaborative efforts this year were outstanding. The mandatory multimedia training, large group meetings and other support services provided to the participants really made a difference in the sophistication of the units that were infused with technology. We would like to again thank all of the faculty, students, and cooperating teachers that were a part of this winning year as well as Patricia Fontaine our Design Team Facilitator for her leadership.

During the summer we hope to revise and expand our website so that there will be additional information, resources and instructional materials available. “How to guides” will be a portion of this effort. We will also be planning a showcase of activities for the fall, revised workshops that will be held throughout the academic year for student, faculty and cooperating teachers and formation of new design teams for year three of the project.

We attended NECC (National Education Computing Conference) in San Antonio in June. Marilyn Sweeney, Chelmsford Public Schools and Susan Birrell, Lowell Public Schools joined John Wren, our Multimedia Specialist and me at the four-day conference. It was a wonderful, invigorating experience and we left with a multitude of new ideas for year 3 of the project.

Judy Boccia, Project Director, Julie Meltzer, Evaluator and I will also be attending the PT 3 (Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers To Use Technology) Annual Grantees Meeting at the end of July in Washington, DC. We will take part in a symposium with the other PT 3 grantees of Massachusetts about the collaboration that we have formed over the past 18 months. In addition, we will also be featured in a session sponsored by Wexford, Inc. regarding our evaluation model. This should make for a busy time at our annual meeting.

Have a relaxing and enjoyable summer!

Marjie Dennis
Project Coordinator