E-Learning Opportunities Now Available for Teachers

The U.S. Department of Education (the Department) is pleased to announce that thousands of teachers have now viewed its new Teacher-to-Teacher free online professional development sessions, which focus on improving teachers' content knowledge and teaching skills in reading, math and science.

The Department is continuing to work to support teachers by seeking state approval of these free, online professional development sessions. So far Delaware, Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Texas have agreed to accept these e-learning sessions as credit toward teacher re-licensure. Arkansas, California, Colorado, Vermont and Wisconsin teachers need approval at the local level to receive credit. Many teachers are also using these sessions to earn credit or points to meet their state's High Objective Uniform State Standard of Evaluation (HOUSSE) to become highly qualified.

Fifteen sessions are currently available online (www.ed.gov/teacherinitiative). In the next few months, eight additional sessions (below) will be added to the Web site.

• Building Fluency: Do It Well and Do It Right
  Scheduled for: 4/5/2005

• Monitoring Comprehension
  Scheduled for: 3/8/2005

• Phonics: The Building Blocks of Early Reading
  Scheduled for: 3/22/2005

• Early Steps Count: Teaching Arithmetic to Prepare Students for Algebra
  Scheduled for: 2/24/2005

• Feedback: A Powerful Tool for Raising Student Achievement in Mathematics
  Scheduled for: 3/29/2005

• Building Teacher Leaders
  Scheduled for: 3/1/2005

• Exciting Teachers and Improving Student Achievement With Standards-Based Data
  Scheduled for: 4/12/2005

Sessions already available free online at www.ed.gov/teacherinitiative are:

• Beginning to Write
  Examining Student Work: A Protocol for Improving Reading

• Looking at Vocabulary

• Phonemic Awareness

• Reading in the Content Areas: It's Just Different

• Feedback: A Powerful Tool for Raising Student Achievement in Language Arts

• Developing Computational Fluency in Addition and Subtraction

• Measurement and Geometry: Building Conceptual Understanding in Young Children

• Patterns to Symbols: Algebra

• Standards-Based Differentiated Math

• Taking the "Dense" Out of Density

• Using Technology to Enhance Algebra Instruction

• Differentiated Instruction

• No Child Left Behind Basics

• Standards-Based Education and Student Report Cards

• Turning Data Into Information

ED will continue to send e-mail updates as more states recognize its free professional development as a pathway to satisfying re-licensure requirements. To learn more and sign-up for free e-mail updates on the Teacher-to-Teacher Initiative, please visit: www.ed.gov/teacherinitiative or call toll-free 1-800-USA-LEARN.