Going the Distance!
January 2005

Newsletter Articles:

• Grant Announcement
• Montana School Districts Create Distance Learning Consortium
• Rural Areas Will Benefit From Online Tutoring
• Program to Prepare Teachers for Virtual Schooling
• Research Center on Rural Schools Questioned

Grant Announcement
Technology & Learning Magazine has reported that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is accepting nominations for Gates Millennium Scholars. “Educators are invited to nominate African American, American Indian/Alaska Natives, Asian Pacific Islander Americans, and Hispanic American students entering a degree program in fall 2005 to become Gates Millennium Scholars.” The award amount varies each year, based on the cost of tuition, fees, books, and living expenses for the academic year, and is sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Students are eligible to be considered for a GMS scholarship if they:

• Are African American, American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian Pacific Islander American or Hispanic American,
• Are a citizen/legal permanent resident or national of the United States,
• Have attained a cumulative GPA of 3.3 on a 4.00 scale (unweighted) at the time of nomination,
• Will be entering a U.S. accredited college or university as full-time, degree seeking freshmen in the Fall of 2005,
• Have demonstrated leadership abilities through participation in community service, extracurricular or other activities, and
• Meet the Federal Pell Grant eligibility criteria.

The deadline for nominations is January 14, 2005. To access nomination materials, please visit http://www.gmsp.org.

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Montana School Districts Create Distance Learning Consortium
The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reports that 35 school districts, representing one-third of Montana's students, have joined a distance learning consortium. Member schools will invest $4,000 to start the consortium, which would be self-funded and member-governed.

The article, titled “Manhattan, Bozeman, Ennis joining statewide distance learning effort,” says that “The consortium is the brainchild of MTSBA and the Montana Rural Education Association, which aim to improve the quality of education and help public schools compete with private schools on the technology front.”

“The consortium would make the technology -- which includes high-speed Internet and video cameras -- more affordable, and would allow schools to benefit from each others' curriculum.”

For more information, please visit www.bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2004/11/23/news/manhattan.txt.

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Rural Areas Will Benefit From Online Tutoring
An article in Education Week reports that rural students will soon benefit from a new project that will develop model for contracting and purchasing online tutoring services. The article, titled “Online Tutoring Targeted at Rural Areas,” says that “a national association is teaming up with three of its regional members and one of the country’s largest providers of supplemental instruction to use the Internet to help give rural students better access to academic tutoring that is required under the federal No Child Left Behind law.”

“The partnership, armed with a $5 million, five-year federal grant, aims to overcome barriers that small and rural school districts face in obtaining such services from education companies, which mostly cater to large metropolitan areas.” The grant will also pay the service provider, Catapult Learning, to supply online tutoring services in the spring of 2005 to 300 students in Ohio, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, and to 500 additional students in each of the following four years of the project.

“Beginning next spring, each student in the project will receive at his or her home a desktop computer that is equipped with a special electronic tablet. Homes will also be given free dial-up Internet service, and the system will have voice-over-IP, a telephone service over the Internet.”

To read further, please visit: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2004/12/08/15model.h24.html.

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Program to Prepare Teachers for Virtual Schooling
Iowa State University has announced that its College of Education has been awarded a three-year, $600,000 grant from the Department of Education “to become the first teacher education program in the nation to prepare undergraduates for virtual schooling.”

An article on the university’s web site says that “the virtual schooling tools created by the program will include prepared lesson plans and examples of successful online instruction that new teachers can use. The program will also provide easy access to experienced teachers for support.”

The article also reports that a recent stuffy has shown that more than 15 percent of all high school students nationally are enrolled in online courses.

The program will be adapted for three collaborating universities -- the University of Virginia, Charlottesville; the University of Florida, Gainesville; and Graceland University, Lamoni. “The $600,000 federal funds provided by the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) in the U.S. Department of Education, through its Comprehensive Program, will cover 60 percent of the $1 million "Teacher Education goes into Virtual Schooling" project. The four collaborating universities will pay the remaining 40 percent.”

For more information, please visit: http://www.educ.iastate.edu/announce/releases/view.php?article=29.