Teacher $1000 Award Announced

The Invent Tomorrow Education Consortium, in partnership with ACELINK, IPFW Division of Continuing Studies, and Comcast Cable promotes, encourages and rewards excellence in the integration of the Allen County Education Network in instruction. Through the “Building a Learning Community Award” program, educators/teams from qualified schools will be supported in their efforts to identify and design a student collaboration project with community and/or city leaders, other classrooms, experts, etc. These projects must utilize videoconferencing to connect students to external resources. The project must align with Indiana Academic standards and focus on an important community issue such as urban renewal, the digital divide, workforce literacy, economic development. Students and educators should use problem-based learning strategies to identify, research, and investigate solutions to their chosen issue.

ACELINK will support and reward selected educators/teams for designing and implementing bold classroom projects that elevate the level of interactive experiences and problem-based learning of their students using two-way interactive videoconferencing.

Funding Focus
All K-12 educators or teams within Bishop Dwenger High School, East Allen County, Fort Wayne Community, Northwest Allen County or Southwest Allen County School districts are eligible to apply. Priority will be given to collaborative projects that identify a specific need, include authentic problem solving and utilize two-way interactive videoconferencing. All projects must be educator-led. Both individual and team proposals will be accepted. There will be no distinction between individual projects and team projects.

Grant Range
There is funding available to provide (8) awards of $1000 each. The award will be divided and presented to the individual applicant/team and school building as follows:
1) Substitute pay will be reimbursed to the building for the teacher/team to attend a Project Planning workshop at IPFW during February 2006.
2) A cash stipend for the remaining amount will be paid to the educator/team after the educator/team attends a Teaching with Technology 2006 Summer Institute at IPFW to complete the project.

In addition, awardees will be provided an option to earn 3.0 graduate credit hours from IPFW for their completed project. An evaluation team made up of school administrators, IPFW faculty and staff, and community leaders using criteria developed by ACELINK will be used to select the awardees.

Application Process
Interested teachers must attend a Project Planning Workshop at IPFW in February 2006. During this workshop, teachers will be provided with the skills and strategies to identify and develop a classroom project. After identifying an appropriate project, applicants can submit a proposal for funding. Proposals are due to IPFW by May 12, 2006.

Contact me at 481-0747 or schaufes@ipfw.edu if you have questions.