Education and Information Dissemination

Essential to systemic education reform and to the successful application of technology to education is the timely sharing of what is known, what the research shows, and what works from a practical viewpoint. This means making the information easily available to every educator in Texas, and encouraging systemic education reform at every level. TCET’s second goal is to serve as a K-12 technology and educational research and development clearinghouse that disseminates research-based information to the district, school, and classroom levels.

TCET produces many research-based publications and/or products each year. Most of these are detailed in the previous Section on Research. These products are made available to all school districts and teacher education programs through the Regional Education Service Centers, on-line via Internet world wide web home pages, an Annual 21st Century Teaching and Learning Symposium, program strands at the annual Texas Computer Education Association Conference, and a wide variety of regional and local conferences. As discussed earlier, many of the START Curriculum Connections deliverables are also distributed directly to each school campus in Texas.

TCET uses multiple approaches to better ensure that needed information is communicated. Through on-line electronic media, CD-ROM, conference and seminar presentations, exhibits, and hard-copy, the TCET staff focuses on dissemination.

TCET has successfully organized and implemented five Annual TCET Teaching and Learning Symposiums at the Dallas Infomart. The purpose of the Symposium is to learn about and celebrate technology projects conducted during the previous school year, to serve as a forum in which leaders make decisions about current and upcoming projects, and determine next steps with technology initiatives in Texas schools. TCET hosts educational reform and technology teams from across the state, as they share their successes and lessons learned with colleagues from Texas public schools, university faculty, community members, parents, and businesses.

Each year, over fifty breakout sessions have been blended into the symposium around themes of community building, telecommunications application and solutions, multimedia applications and solutions technical support, curriculum solutions, and technology staff development. Feedback from participants consistently is that the conference, although small, is the quality of a national meeting.

In 1998, Symposium co-sponsors included Centers for Professional Development of Teachers, North Texas Community and Junior College Consortium, South Central Regional Technology in Education Consortium-Texas, Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, State Board for Educator Certification, Texas Association of Rural Schools, Texas Business and Education Coalition, Council of Educational Facility Planners International, Texas Distance Learning Association, and University of North Texas College of Education.

Featured speakers included Anita Givens, Texas Education Agency; James Poirot, University of North Texas; Kay Abernathy, Kountze ISD; Bill Adkins, Highland Park ISD; Dennis Crawley and Diego Morales, Ysleta ISD; and Tim Stephenson and Jim Wells, Greenbrier, Arkansas. One of the unique features of the 1998 Symposium was the extensive agenda of pre-conference workshops that covered planning, curriculum integration, grant-writing, leadership, and technology implementation. The complete program may be found in the Appendix.

Participant feedback includes responses like "Well planned…great variety in offerings," "…several topics of interest during each concurrent session,""informative and practical," "lots of good information on how technology is working to enhance curriculum.." and "…exhibits were very informative." Approximately 400-500 persons attended the symposium each of the last four years. There were over 125 schools, professors from over 15 colleges and universities, ESC representation from most of the regional centers as well as parents and business representatives.

TCET and the University of North Texas were selected by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to develop and host one of four regional technology summits for educators across the country. This project is in concert with TCET’s role as an information clearinghouse, and further establishes TCET as a national leader in the application of technology to education.

An Advisory Council created by the CPB in 1994, which included the late Ernest L. Boyer, President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, specifically recommended that CPB use its educational resources to help teachers, librarians, teacher educators, and prospective teachers learn how to more effectively use technology in their classroom instruction. To implement these recommendations, CPB sponsored The Ernest L. Boyer Technology Summits for Educators, and allocated approximately $2 million to fund the series of four conferences.

Ernest L. Boyer was one of our nation’s most influential educators. He served on commissions to advise Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter. He promoted the idea that schools and teachers needed to be at the forefront of technological innovation, and that technology must play an integral role in the American classroom.

The conferences were held in Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University), Nashville (Peabody College of Vanderbilt University), Los Angeles (University of Southern California and California State University), and Dallas (TCET and the University of North Texas).

The TCET/CPB Technology Summit was held in September, 1997 for a fourteen-state region from Louisiana to North Dakota, including Texas, and Puerto Rico. Over 200 secondary school teachers and university faculty received two days of intense training and hands-on activities with educational technology. Topics included educational applications of telecommunications, distance education, Internet applications including curricula-based home pages, and telementoring for teachers and students.

KERA, the Public Broadcasting affiliate in Dallas, NCATE (the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education), and the Southwestern Bell Foundation partnered with TCET and CPB in sponsoring this unique and very successful event. Two of TCET’s Board members, CCC and Scholastic, participated in the technology program.

Texas school district superintendents will be able to increase their understanding and ability to answer these and similar questions at the innovative new course offering from TASA and the Texas Leadership Center, in partnership with the Texas Center for Educational Technology (TCET), and with funds from Southwestern Bell Telephone. This program includes training materials and on-line activities specifically designed for school superintendents and other busy instructional school leaders.

The Technology Leadership Academy is in three phases. Phase One is a one-half day seminar that covers five focus areas that will enhance the district's technology action plan and set the stage for Phase Two. Phase Two is the online portion of the course, available at office or home computer, that will build upon Phase One and provide an assessment of where the district stands with respect to its technology plan and current implementation. The superintendent will be asked to assess their district in relation to models and standards presented in Phase One; the instructors will provide online support. This Phase will take approximately four hours of their time. Phase Three is a one-half day final seminar at the TASA Spring Conference in April 1999. Here, the administrators will discuss what they have learned, changes in leadership approach, progress with respect to their technology plan, future direction, and follow-on needs in technology education.

Administrators unable to attend Phase One and/or Phase Three seminars may still take the Phase Two online portion of the course for the regular registration fee. Course reference materials will be provided in both hard copy and online formats for your use, and the instructors will contact you with additional details. Topics covered will include:

• Future trends in technology
• Technology planning and evaluation models
• Staffing for technology
• Integrating technology into the curriculum
• Collaborations and funding strategies

As part of its mission, TCET shares research and current practice through presentations at forums, conferences, and regional educational meetings throughout Texas each year. During the last school year, TCET staff have been available to assist educators, public schools, Education Service Centers, universities, and communities in clearinghouse activities and dissemination of research-based information. Presentations were made by TCET staff in nearly 100 different meetings of Texas public school administrators, board members, teachers, counselors, vocational teachers, curriculum supervisors, and librarians across the state.

TCET has specifically presented on multiple occasions to school leadership in Texas at TASA/TASB conferences, and superintendent and principal conferences sponsored by Texas A&M, the University of North Texas, TASSP/TEPSA, and other professional organizations.

Presentations were made in all geographic regions of the state. TCET staff worked with ESC staff in eighteen of twenty Regional Education Service Centers, and made over seventy presentations throughout Texas in support of technology integration.

All TCET publications have been historically available to school districts via the Regional Education Service Centers. Additionally, TCET has provided the twenty-five Texas Centers for Professional Development and Technology (CPDT) complete sets of all TCET materials. For several years, TCET has invited teams from each of the CPDTs to make presentations at the annual TCET Symposium.

TCET organized, presented and evaluated the results of TCET programs at both state and regional meetings of the Texas Computer Education Association. Approximately 8,000 Texas educators were in attendance at the 1998 TCEA annual conference in Austin. Many of those in attendance participated in the TCET strand of programs. TCET staff also participated in programs on distance education, curriculum integration, multimedia, and telecommunications in regional TCEA meetings across the state.

T-STAR (Texas School Telecommunications Access Resource) is a statewide telecommunications initiative that provides one-way video/two-way audio satellite communications to Texas school districts. TCET delivers the latest information on education technology research directly to educators three to four times a year. Videotapes of these broadcasts can be re-shown as needed to teachers and administrators who may be unable to view the live shows. .

Since its inception, TCET has posted electronic research abstracts, sponsored news groups, posted R&D summary reports, and hosted conference/discussion groups for educators on the Internet. The TCET world-wide-web address is http://www.tcet.unt.edu.

The TCET homepage allows viewing a summary of all publications, and the downloading of most with full text and graphics. It also contains links to other World Wide Web information sources for educators. Nearly 13,000 have visited TCET’s web site since its inception last year.

TCET’s World Wide Web site was selected by "Syllabus", a popular magazine on technology for education, as #3 of its "Top 40" based on comprehensiveness, creativity, and relevance for educators interested in technology.

Recently, TCET staff received this comment via a e-mail from a Texas parent:

Texas Center for Educational Technology