Grant Notes & Ideas

Harold Johnson

4/10/99

Overall Grant Competition:

Goal:

Foster the innovative and comprehensive redesign of teacher preparation by encouraging consortia of networked stakeholders to design, develop, implement, evaluate and share new, technologically intensive:

1. teaching strategies;
2. assessment protocols;
3. learning resources; and
4. learning opportunities.

In addition, the redesigned teacher preparation programs should also serve to strengthen current and establish new avenues through which individuals become teachers. If this occurs, sufficient numbers of technologically proficient teachers will graduate from teacher preparation programs to meet the projected teacher need and all of their students will be provided the opportunity to meet high academic standards.

Assumptions:

Current teacher preparation programs are not preparing a sufficient number of technologically proficient teachers. If such teachers were available in sufficient numbers, all students would achieve high standards. The need for technologically proficient teachers is most critical in rural and urban schools where the "digital gap" is most pronounced. This gap is also tied to the fact that such schools also experience the highest rate of teacher turn over.

The faculty of the nation’s teacher preparation programs constitute the critical change agents for the targeted redesign work. Unfortunately, many faculty lack the technological sophistication and institutional support that are needed to prepare technologically proficient teachers. In addition, many teacher preparation programs lack sufficient field settings in which technology is well infused into teaching and learning. As such, there is a critical lack of technologically intensive, "hands-on", learning opportunities for both faculty and their students. The availability and use of such experiences is especially critical during methods course work.

"Capacity Building Grants" – Summary Description:

Not a planning grant

Support provided to:

1. access needs
2. provide opportunities for program development
3. define realistic objectives
4. define initial outcomes that are to be accomplished
5. respond to changes/emerging trends
6. lay the groundwork for the implementation of a comprehensive teacher preparation program redesign (i.e., define the needed steps to a comprehensive, consortium based, innovative and technologically intensive teacher preparation program model)
7. acquire new learning
8. carry out faculty development
9. carry out curricular redesign
10. form cross disciplinary/institutional partnerships
11. cultivate/seek additional institutional, consortium, federal, state, foundation and/or business support to implement redesigned teacher preparation program design
12. establish "formative" evaluation methods/plans, with clear "benchmarks" for documenting future improvements

Grant Funds:

50-175K

1 yr

maximum of 8% for indirect

up to 10% for evaluation

must allocate funds for up to three individuals to attend one regional and two national conferences

must have a one-to-one match for received federal funds (Note: can not use other federal funds to provide this match

Grant Submission:

Due by 6/4/99

15 page narrative (double spaced, 10pt or higher fount, double spaced)

+ one page Title page, Abstract & Table of Contents

+ nine item Appendix

Note: no letters of support needed – see consortium member forms

Grant Format:

Title page form

Abstract

Table of Contents

Narrative (15 pages, double spaced, 10pt or higher)

Need

Design

Resources

Evaluation

Budget (narrative & form)

Appendix

1. Lead Organization Information form
2. List of Consortium Members form
3. Partner Support form
4. Project Personnel
5. Equipment Acquisition (Learning Technology Plan format)
6. Evaluation Plan
7. Evidence of Previous Support
8. Equitable Access & Participation assurances
9. Private School Partnership information

Grant Evaluation:

1. Need for the project
2. Quality of the project design
3. Adequacy of the resources
4. Quality of the project evaluation

ACE-D/HH "Capacity Building" Grant Proposal – Ideas & Suggestions:

Title:

"Instructional Effectiveness Through Technological Innovations for the Field of Deaf Education"

Vision:

Recognize what we each do well, identify what we all would like to do better, collaboratively explore how we can use technology to enhance our instruction, increase our resources, improve the performance of our students, support our recent graduates, expand our enrollment and build learning opportunities for K-12 deaf/hard-of-hearing (d/hh) students.

Possible Plan:

1. access the technological needs of teacher preparation programs within the field of Deaf Education
2. identify the current technology based strategies and resources of those programs
3. conceptualize a redesign of those programs, one based upon collaboration, supported by technology, guided by research and grounded in the day-to-day realities of K-12 d/hh students
4. pilot the development of new technological enhanced instructional strategies, assessment designs and learning resources that can/should be used within those programs
5. expand the consortium of program stakeholders
6. search for additional support opportunities for the consortium, i.e., institutional, federal, state, foundation, businesses/organizations
7. plan for the implementation of the redesigned programs
8. submit for funds to implement the redesigned programs

Need for Grant:

1. "inclusion" – an increasingly common educational setting for d/hh students – how do we prepare our students for it?
2. "best practices" - what are the best practices (e.g., instructional strategies) for the instruction of d/hh students (regardless of com phil)?
3. How do we raise expectations of what our d/hh students can accomplish?
4. "cases" – we all need cases/case studies of both "master" teachers and different field experiences (e.g., rural – urban; Hispanic d/hh stu, etc) to give our stu more inst models and to prepare them for the range of inst. Settings they will likely face
5. CEC/CEC-CED standards – indicators of how they can be best met within each of the three com. Phil
6. Communication competencies (e.g., signing, sign language, verbal/written English) how to develop and how to measure
7. Curriculum resources – continuum of age appropriate, grade consistent curricular materials that can/should be used with d/hh stu and how to effectively modify other cur materials to meet the ed. Needs of the stu
8. Collaboration with parents – as a source of information, as a different perspective on the needs/abilities of d/hh stu, as an opportunity to share info, and to learn how to effectively support and work with after graduation – same as before, i.e., use technology to effectively carry out such comm
9. Preservice students, during their field experiences, using their technological skills to provide informal, in class technical support to existing teachers of d/hh students

Grant related ideas/activities:

1. the more complex the task, the simpler the design must be
2. if you don’t change the work we require of our students, you will not change the way we teach those students
3. tie stu work to K-12 teacher’s needs, e.g., cur dev teams
4. use stu’s field work to document how master, technology proficient teachers use technology to enhance their teaching and the performance of their students
5. use past graduates to mentor current students (e.g., Cyber Mentor Project) + provide those recent graduates with support during their first few years of teaching + use those same recent graduates to help identify other individuals in their communities (e.g., high school students, other teachers, interpreters, parents, etc.) would are interested in possible becoming a teacher of the deaf, then placing such individuals in contact with a current student as a way of informing and encouraging them
6. ask faculty to identify any exceptionally strong, technology proficient teachers they use for field/student teaching placements, then use existing students to develop multimedia portfolios on those teachers – a few could be developed into the CDROM based "cases" mentioned earlier
7. will need to document/access the current levels/types of technology infusions that are happening, then track if/how such "infusions" spread/increase as the project cont.
8. in relation to stu work – have them develop multimedia portfolios of their teaching philosophies, instructional strategies, instructional resources and instructional assessment protocols (the pre/post occurrence of such could serve as an "outcome" of the project, indicating that faculty had indeed infused technology into their teaching, just as a pre/post examination of course syllabi might show
9. examine/consider how stu from different teacher prep pro can collaborate with and inform one another (e.g., what it is like in their field experiences) to work with different populations of d/hh students (e.g., Aural, Bi/Bi, Comprehensive – rural, suburban, urban --- inclusion, resource, self-contained, day school, residential ---- parent/infant, preschool, K-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-transition --- etc.) – use technology to facilitate such collaboration and share the best of the resulting work on the CED Web site……from which we could pull and use the information in our courses to further enrich them
10. possibility of identifying a few master teachers as clinical faculty and/or simply invite them (as a regular part of the method course design to come and speak to the classes re. How they infuse technology into their teaching and the stu learning – document such class presentations and share the best of them on the Web
11. in the grant Appendix, section dealing with "Evidence of Previous Success" – we can/should talk about:

1. the recent implementation of the new CEC/CEC-CED standards
2. the CED review process we use
3. the array of technology infusion presentations/efforts we have made and how such have continually increased over time
4. pertinent research and grant work we have done
5. the Ameritech work I am doing and the CDROM work that Sam Slike has done + ______
6. the sabbatical work that I and Alan Marvelli did to support the technological development of Deaf Ed faculty and students around the country the research I did re. Current/expected net use in K-12 d/hh classes_______