Doors open to school on Net — for teachers
Posted on Thursday, September 7, 2006
Beginning in October, Arkansas’s teachers will be able to log on and brush up on their teaching skills.
Arkansas IDEAS — Internet Delivered Education for Arkansas Schools — was unveiled Wednesday after years of collaboration among the Arkansas Department of Education, the Arkansas Educational Television Network, and PBS TeacherLine.
Arkansas teachers can access the Web-based resource, which offers them tools to help students perform better in school, anytime, anywhere they can hook up with the Internet.
“The Department of Education is looking at its horizons very differently than ever before,” Gov. Mike Huckabee said at a news conference Wednesday in Little Rock.
The governor called it a “landmark, milestone day.”
The program will be available free to teachers and local school districts. Funding will come from the state, officials said.
Other states charge for similar resources that allow teachers to enhance their content knowledge and instructional skills though online courses, workshops and other features, said Kathleen Branton, education director at the Arkansas Educational Television Network.
Charging for the resource might mean only teachers in school districts that could afford it would get access, she said.
“This levels the playing field so everybody in the state has the ability to get high-quality professional development,” Branton said.
And a level playing field was called for by the court that decided the Lake View school funding case, said Sen. Jim Argue, D-Little Rock, who spoke at the news conference held at the Education Department.
The Arkansas Supreme Court in 2002 declared the state’s public education system to be inequitable, inadequate and, as a result, unconstitutional.
The ruling was the result of a school funding lawsuit filed 10 years earlier by Lake View School District in Phillips County. Since 2002, state lawmakers and education policy leaders have scrambled to correct the deficiencies and are due to report to the high court on their most recent efforts by Dec. 1.
Act 2318 of 2005 created the Arkansas Online Professional Development Initiative. The legislation requires all certified employees of public schools to complete 60 hours of approved professional development each year. Courses offered through the resource meet those requirements.
Teachers can start earning that credit in October.
That’s when 4, 000 spots in more than 70 PBS TeacherLine courses will be available through Arkansas IDEAS. Most will last six weeks, and all will be taught 35 veteran Arkansas teachers with master’s degrees and training in course facilitation and community building.
Courses in core-curriculum areas, educational technology and classroom management are based on research-supported teaching strategies and aligned with Arkansas curriculum framework and national standards.
Arkansas IDEAS also includes:
Videostreaming, which will allow teachers to build lesson plans and classroom presentations. More than 4, 000 fulllength videos, 40, 000 video clips, 7, 000 images as well as writing prompts, teacher resources and clip art will be used. Training in computers, digital photography, editing, Power-Point and Web design. Educational television programming from the AETN Scholar Channel.
Communication networks such as electronic message boards for teachers across Arkansas.
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