N.C. teachers get Web template
- By Dibya Sarkar
- Dec 03, 2001
Example of a teacher's Web site
A North Carolina pilot project begun earlier this year that provides public
school teachers with a customizable template to build classroom Web pages
has become so successful that the initiative was launched statewide this
fall.
Currently, about 35 of the state's 100 counties are participating in
the NC Classes Online (www.ncgov.com/ncclasses) project, which was developed
jointly by the state, Accenture, Yahoo, and BellSouth Corp.
Rob Berton, a partner with Accenture, said he believed that North Carolina
is the only state offering the service to all of its schools. State and
company officials did not know the number of teachers using the service.
An hour-long training session sets teachers on their way to using the
Web page development tool, called PageWizard, to communicate with parents
and post homework assignments, schedules, lunch menus and other school-related
information. The service is offered through the state portal and is free
for teachers.
Teachers are not required to use it, but Frances Bradburn, state director
of instruction technology, said interest is so great that a presentation
of this project at a recent state education technology conference attracted
a standing-room-only crowd in a 300-seat meeting space.
"The thing that is most interesting is how willing teachers were to
move in this direction," she said. "Whole schools are saying, eThis is the
way we're going to communicate with parents.' Before, technology [usage]
has been one or two people who do this. Technology oftentimes has not been
a whole school event. With this, this has been a whole school event. No
question about it."
Bradburn said the only problem the state is having is finding enough
people and money to do the training. "Equipment is not the issue," she said.