A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Technology Literacy Challenge Fund

A National Mission to Make Every Young Person Technologically Literate:

The purpose of the Technology Literacy Challenge Fund (TLCF) is to help make sure that all children are technologically literate by the dawn of the 21st century, equipped with the communication, math, science, reading, and critical thinking skills essential for advancing learning and improving productivity and performance.

States, using the TLCF as a starting point, are working with the private sector, schools, teachers, parents, students, communities and governments to achieve the four national goals for educational technology:

• provide all teachers the training and support they need to help students learn through computers and the information superhighway;
• develop effective and engaging software and on-line learning resources as an integral part of the school curriculum;
• provide access to modern computers for all teachers and students; and
• connect every school and classroom in America to the information superhighway.

Planning:

Each state submits a plan for educational technology for the state. Plans include overall financial plans, and states report annually both on financing and on progress on state goals for educational technology that relate to the national goals above. School districts also must plan. Long-range district educational technology plans, required for districts to receive TLCF funds, must be approved by the state. District plans usually encompass all of a district?s technology efforts and funding, including state and local funds and funding under the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (the E-rate).

Directing funds to where the need is greatest:

States give priority for funds to districts with the greatest poverty and with the greatest need for educational technology, so that federal funds make up for gaps in other sources of funds. Most states conduct their competitions so that the poorest and neediest districts have a competitive advantage, but some states permit only poor and needy districts to apply. The definitions of poverty and need and the weight given to them are left to state discretion.

State and local flexibility:

States and districts have considerable discretion about the conduct of competitions, and can give preference to certain activities (such as professional development), types of districts (poor rural districts), or even geographic areas of the state. Needs and the level of implementation of educational technology vary enormously across the states. States are able to tailor the use of TLCF funds to fit their circumstances.

For more information please contact: Charles Lovett 401-0039
http://www.ed.gov/Technology/TLCF/.

Examples

Albuquerque High School, Albuquerque, New Mexico

The 13 schools of the Albuquerque High School cluster, four parochial elementary schools, and the Menaul School have joined in the Learning in Networked Collaboration (LINC) project, designed to extend the use of technology in K-12 classrooms through 2 approaches with potential for statewide replication in professional development and school network implementation. More than 7,900 public school and 1,750 private school students will benefit from activities which will improve technology integration across grades K-12 through:

• the development of technology integration curriculum units linked to content area benchmarks and standards which bring together teachers with technology expertise and teachers who are experts in curriculum content delivery;
• professional development workshops in implementation of these units will follow the development effort; and
• the development of local area network management infrastructures that will support student learning of literacy and telecommunications skills by shaping the schools' network as an environment for delivery of technology-based content area instruction.

These LINC activities will help the schools serving the disadvantaged student population of downtown Albuquerque meet these objectives in technology education for students:

• Student literacy competencies, including mathematical literacy, will be improved through technology-based teaching and learning that address content area standards and benchmarks.
• Students will be fluent users of technology tools in communication and problem-solving tasks.
• Students will be skilled in accessing and participating as authors in local and global telecommunications environments.
• Students will demonstrate the technology skills needed to successfully compete in the workplace of the 21st century.

Oro Grande School District, Oro Grande, California

This district and its coordinating partner, the Camp Internet Educational Technology Consortium, both have educational technology plans that emphasize technology equity—connecting rural district resources and access to a district with urban resources and access. Oro Grande also provides rural/urban low-income classrooms with learning opportunities equal to more affluent classroom counterparts. This effort is part of the national movement to lessen the digital divide.

The Camp Internet project won a Smithsonian Innovation Network Award in 1999, an AOL Rural Capacity Building award in 1999, as well as USDA support for rural distance learning. The project brings classrooms together with subject specialists at museums, universities, national and state Parks, National Marine Sanctuaries and other education agencies to enhance the student learning experience—an experience only feasible with computer-facilitated learning. The project is demonstrating techniques for building distance learning communities of teachers who receive year-round support for integrating a tangible technology application into their classrooms. Students of all types, including those considered at-risk, are showing improved academic interests and accomplishments as a result of participation in the programming.

Nettleton School District, Nettleton, Mississippi

The goal of the award to the Nettleton School District is to provide the equipment, software and training to enable classrooms to integrate technology in 38 new classrooms in grades K-6 so that all students will become technologically literate. The addition of these computers and the software moves us toward our goal of reducing the ratio of student to multimedia computer to 15 to one. Each of the 38 classrooms will be connected to the Internet and technology inservice options are provided to K-6 teachers. The curriculum is enhanced through student work in areas such as report writing, information gathering, multi-sensory approaches to learning, learning to create web pages, and integrating existing software packages and information on the Internet with the core curriculum.

Publications

For additional information on the Technology Literacy Challenge Fund, please visit: http://www.ed.gov/Technology/

• An Educator?s Guide to Evaluating the Use of Technology in Schools and Classrooms; December 1998; U.S Department of Education.

• Technology Literacy Challenge Fund: Report to Congress; June 1998; U.S. Department of Education.

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