|
From AcceleratU's Mission Page The acronym ACCELERATE also informs our purpose and vision. The "ACC" focuses on access, a vision to create supporting technology tools and structures that are easily accessible, simple to use, and that are constantly reflective of our need to create services that respect the technical readiness levels of the majority. The "ELE", which stands for "enhanced learning environments," highlights our vision to use technology to create new delivery and learning methods, new ways to augment and enliven instruction, and to develop new potentials within digital technologies, which create communities of learners that defy time and distance barriers. The "RATE", stands for "regional advancements of training efforts." Simply stated, by working together, we will advance and "accelerate" each of our own organization's mission and service to its customers. Accomplishing our goals will present many challenges for us. The technology environment is one where we have little previous frame of reference. It is a pioneering landscape where most everything is invention. Initially, with such innovation comes risk, ambiguity, uncertainty, and imprecision. Web-based learning does not lend itself to fixed boundaries and challenges many of our notions about learning and the school operation. Yet, we all realize that the potentials to communicate, learn and empower staff and students via digital technologies is immense and here to stay. It is a primary medium for communication among our youth. We should not lag behind. Why face the challenges as an organization alone? The strengths to be found in our teamwork, common goals and the harnessing of the diverse talents and energies in our organizations will overcome the challenges we face. The nature of our work together is based in the principles and concepts of a Cooperative. It involves our commitment over time to share and to pool our individual agency resources, and to contribute to the whole group where each organization has capacities and interests. Our work together is not intended to be a one way relationship where members simply purchase services. Rather, we are invested in each other's success, and this will further the success of our organization and most importantly, the staff and students we serve. Please feel free to visit our website at http://accelerateu.org. If you are interested in participating or wish more information, please contact Amy Perry at aperry@edutech.org. OUR SHARED VISION: GOALS: 1. A full range of on-line course work relative to NYS Standards initiatives that are easy to use and available to thousands of customers anytime, any place, at any pace." The development of skilled on-line course designers and facilitators to support this direction. The developed course work would be used to address the 175-hour teacher-training requirement. 2. The development of a "one stop" comprehensive NYS K-12 instructional support web site composed of original content, links to web resources and news from educators in the field." The site can be customized by the users to reflect their needs." Authoring of new content to the site will regularly occur by instructional leaders from throughout the State. 3. The development of online student tutorials providing additional instruction to students in areas related to new State assessments, Regents exams and Academic Intervention Services. 4. The ongoing technical development and sharing of web enablement tools related to web design, messaging, streaming video/audio, document sharing and web animation to support the above initiatives. 5. The continuous pursuit of understanding and creating the necessary conditions and structures to help educators and students use and integrate technology into their work, in meaningful ways, which inspire learning and productivity. BELIEFS: What is bringing us here is an evolving shared vision for providing instructional support through digital technologies in New York State. Our vision and the ability to operationalize this vision has become more important and urgent in light of the rapids of change swirling around us. The Regents and Commissioner Mills has set an aggressive and challenging direction for all schools to significantly improve. He exhorts us all to focus and take "aim" on the NYS standards. In change, everything is not neat, nor is there a great amount of time to plan. The urgency and complexity of effectively communicating with and providing educational opportunities to the multitude of stakeholders who will all be significantly impacted by the new assessments is astounding. The numbers are huge. The current state of this challenge is very worrisome, as simple access by teachers to the new curriculum, assessments and professional development comes with many obstacles. Face-to-face training on the topic is hindered by issues of time, money for and availability of subs and lost instructional time. All of us together, need a pragmatic, coherent, integrated and coordinated plan for instructional support. Politics is skewing incentive systems through technology moneys and grants that fuel competition and significantly create redundancies or "technology waste." The grants often reward constant hardware/software innovation and bleeding edge technologies that do not take into account the real "readiness issues and dilemmas" of teachers and administrators. All these factors are wrapped in the transformational impact of technology upon our culture, the way we do business, and the minute detail of our day to day workflow. Technology, right or wrong, changes the rules. In fact, in most instances turns them upside down. For example, students know more about computers and electronic communication than the teachers. Technicians are hired at rapidly escalating salaries based on today's new skills, not yesterday's college seat time. At some technical levels we will pay them more than teachers and some administrators. The "death of distance" brought on by the Internet is changing our commerce as well as the way we teach and learn and so on. So in the midst of this ultra dynamic environment, as leaders we work, we chase technology, and we wrestle with how to do the right thing for students, educators and parents. Our job, our AIM, in a nutshell, is instructional support. This aim must be targeted upon the new assessments and the new standards. Somehow we know that the job and the environment is too big, too complex for any one of us. The old structures are not working. Vendors constantly distract us from our aim with the new, faster and better. In technology, today's innovation is tomorrow's routine. The problem though with this sentence, a paradox of sorts, is that with this constant innovation, the necessary road to routine (immersion, learning, and mastery) never gets established with individuals. The environment for learning, internalization, and creation of routine is undermined by constant innovation. Thus, use of these new digital tools in the classroom is sub-optimized. These are some of the reasons why we have taken time to travel, to meet, and to find alliances and new potentials within them. As a group, as individuals, we have talked with one another. We discuss, challenge, problem solve and have begun to sort our way. Working together, accelerating each other where we can, is part of the path. The Project Accelerate Team |
|
|||||||||||||||||