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California Educational Data Processing Association
DataBus - Vol. 38, No. 2
February-March, 1998
ITA '98: Beyond the Network

Training: Academy to offer expanded offerings for technologists.

Virginia Steiner, WestEd

Last year, WestEd began the Internet Technical Academy (ITA) Project in order to research and facilitate Internet integration in the California education system. After surveying schools for their current needs in the area of Internet training, ITA conducted a three-day summer institute focusing on networking and troubleshooting fundamentals. This year, ITA plans on expanding its offerings by providing regional workshops and satellite teleconferences focused on topics such as technology planning and Internet integration in the classroom.

Following last year's success in training over 130 school-site network support staff in Internet network design and support issues, ITA once again conducted a survey to identify this year's top technology training needs. The following ITA offerings are in response to the needs and concerns voiced from the field:

Technology Planning Workshops - "Putting the Pieces Together"

Teams of teachers, administrators, technology mentors, and principals will address the essential elements needed to implement a technology plan that supports staff productivity and powerful student learning. Among the topics that will be covered are planning, staff development, curriculum integration, scope and sequence, and teacher and student standards. The workshop will be held in two locations: in Butte County on February 26th and in Monterey County on March 4th.

Satellite Teleconferences

A series of satellite teleconferences will continue with the technology planning framework introduced in the above workshops and expand on the material through the introduction of brief interviews with teachers and administrators implementing successful technology plans. Each satellite teleconference will address one of the technology planning topics covered previously in the workshops. This will be a four-part series to be broadcast on successive Fridays in May.

Advanced Internet Application Workshops

The second set of workshops moves beyond technical training courses by focusing on methods for using advanced Internet applications to support teaching and learning. These workshops, combined with the ITA Newsletter, will help technology coordinators apply basic network and Web experience to the realm of Web site interaction by providing information about the following: These two-day workshops will be offered in five regional locations throughout March and April.

In addition to offering the new workshops and satellite series, ITA will continue to produce the ITA Newsletter. The newsletter will provide supporting "how to" documentation for the Advanced Internet Applications Workshops. If you are not subscribed to the ITA Newsletter listserv and would like to receive the upcoming "how to" issues, send an email message to: . In the body of the message, write:

subscribe ita-newsletter your name

ITA is currently investigating the use of these advanced Internet applications in education-related projects. If you are using such applications in ways listed above, or know of someone who is, we would love to hear from you. Please contact Virginia Steiner, ITA Workshop Director, by 405.

For more information on any or all of these events, or if you have relevant experiences that you would like to share, please contact Mark Aronica, ITA Project Director, at , or at (415) 565-3056.

WestEd is a non-profit research, development, and service agency dedicated to improving education and other opportunities for children, youth, and adults. Drawing on the best from research and practice, we work with practitioners and policymakers to address critical issues in education and other related areas.

The agency was created in 1995 to unite and enhance the capacity of Far West Laboratory and Southwest Regional Laboratory, two of the nation's original education laboratories created by Congress in 1966. In addition to our work across the nation, WestEd serves as the regional education laboratory for Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah. Our headquarters are in San Francisco, with additional offices in Arizona; Massachusetts; Washington, DC; and elsewhere in California.

Virginia Steiner is ITA Workshop Director at WestEd. She may be reached at (415) 565-3056 or by email at [email protected].

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