Among the freshly published country reports, Insight presents as a brand new entry, three reports coming from the US. Although not covering the whole US territory, the data and information provided by the states of Arizona, Indiana and Wisconsin sketch a picture of the main trends and up-to-date working methods currently on oversea.
The publication of these snapshots from the US has been made possible thanks to the cooperation with the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) of the United States, which gathered information using the Insight country report model. CoSN It provides products and services to support leadership development, advocacy, coalition building, and awareness of emerging technologies in schools.
As the US education system is decentralised, there are a wide variety of federal, state and local laws that define its various aspects, the State Departments of Education/Public Instruction have a major role in setting concrete policies and programmes to enhance and monitor the quality of the education system. They usually set the main frameworks such as learning standards pupils must meet, but they leave local districts and schools free to decide how to comply with them.
The Insight country reports of Arizona, Indiana and Wisconsin have been drawn up by the State Department of Education respectively of Arizona and Indiana and the State Department of Public Instruction of Wisconsin.
In Arizona, three interesting initiatives have been launched: the E-Learning Task Force, looking at innovative ways to help students master middle school maths standards using digital curriculum with 1:1 access; the Integrated Data to Enhance Arizona's Learning (IDEAL), a web portal providing Arizona teachers’ access to rich standards-based resources; and the New Ed Tech Legislation, setting an instructional technology system pilot programme.
In Indiana, the programme inACCESS - Indiana Affordable Classroom Computer for Every Secondary School has introduced tech integration lessons and data collection as part of tech literacy. The one-to-one computing programme started with English and language arts classrooms and has moved to science, social studies and math classrooms. Indiana has also developed an Algebra 1 online learning tool, a maths portal for algebra students and teachers.
In Wisconsin, the most successful initiative in recent years has been the Technology for Educational Achievement Programme (TEACH), providing access to information technologies and advances as well as improving student learning and teacher instruction. It is organised in four branches covering the funding for educational technology, access to data, voice and video distance education connections, grants for teacher training and technical assistance as well as financial assistance for the upgrade of computer network.
More info:
Arizona Country Report
http://insight.eun.org/country_reports/US_Arizona
Indiana Country Report
http://insight.eun.org/country_reports/US_Indiana
Wisconsin Country Report
http://insight.eun.org/country_reports/US_Wisconsin
Arizona Department of Education
www.ade.az.gov/
Indiana Department of Education
www.doe.state.in.us/
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction
http://dpi.wi.gov/
US Department of Education
www.ed.gov/index.jhtml