CECA Podcasts are UP!

Clint Kennedy has posted the podcasts from the CECA conference.

These may be found at http://feeds.feedburner.com/CECA. The episodes include David Warlick's session entitled "Flattening of the Web" and the CECA Conference slide show put together by Ted Roth.

Thanks Clint!

New award to invest in IT literacy

The Verizon Tech Savvy Awards were established by the National Conference on Family Literacy (NCFL), the Verizon Foundation, and the First Lady of Iowa Christie Vilsack, a Verizon Literacy Champion, and are designed to support sustainable programs that help parents bridge the widening gap between adults’ and children’s understanding of technology. The two generations must learn about technology together so parents can be effective teachers and advocates to ensure that their children are literate in technology and prepared for the 21st century workforce.

Successful programs should create innovative ways to employ technology as an important component in family literacy, and those methods should have the ability to be easily replicated at other sites across the country.

Four $5,000 regional awards and one $25,000 national award will be presented at NCFL’s National Conference on Family Literacy in March 2007. Deadline for submissions is January 12, 2007. For more information, please visit www.famlit.org/techsavvyawards

EETT proposals have been scored

On Thursday, 26 readers (Cindy Eastman, Joe Martino, Dulcy O’Rourke, Jane Cook,Sarah Smith-Levine, Chris LaCasse, Emily Rosen, Rebecca Priest, Heather Zolnowski, Kirsten Hoyt, Patricia Lannon, Michael Grove, Howard Gunther, Tom Adams, Barbara Haeffner, Carol May, Margaret Boice, Lois Luddy, Doug Casey, Wanda Wagner, Diane Dugas, Antoinette Towle, Kathy Randall, Josh Smith, Jim Huggins and Julie Rey) gathered @ ACES to discuss and score all of the proposals. Individually, they spent hours reading the grants and on Thursday volunteered an entire additional day to discuss their findings.

We hope to have award letters out by mid-November.

October Issue of iCONN Times

All of the issues of the iCONN Times, inlcuding the just released October issue may be found at http://www.iconn.org/iConnTimes.aspx.

2006 NetDay Speak Up Survey

NetDay Speak Up is an annual national research project that collects the voices and views of key stakeholders in education on topics such as educational technology, science, math, and 21st workforce skills. Over the past three years the project has collected the viewpoints of over 562,000 K-12 students from all 50 states, as well as 26,000 teachers. For the first time this year, Speak Up for Parents has been added.

The results of the surveys are shared with participating schools and districts so that they can use the data for planning and community discussion. In addition, the findings and data are used by local, state, and national organizations, business groups, and government agencies to inform new programs and polices. This year Net Day will also be providing states with state level data.

The Speak Up dates are Wednesday, November 1 - Thursday, November 30, 2006. Please visit the NetDay Speak Up How-to guide for ideas on how to promote the Speak Up event at your school. You can print out a flier to post at your school or use our email text to send reminders to your teachers.

Your input on the survey is very important. SETDA has promised to share the results with members of Congress.