May 4, 2000 | Read Time: 1 minute
Netday, which has led a nationwide volunteer effort to wire elementary and secondary schools for the Internet, is refocusing its energies on bridging the digital divide and helping teachers use technology in their classrooms.
As part of an assessment of its mission last fall, the Irvine, Calif., charity asked educators about their schools’ technology needs.
“One of the things that became more and more apparent to me in that analysis was that the world of education today has matured beyond just the wiring,” says Julie Evans, the organization’s chief executive officer. “The wiring is no longer really the end of the story.” She says that many of the educators she spoke to were grappling with the question of what to do after they gained access to the Internet.
NetDay is applying what it learned during the review to its new project to create model technology programs in 90 schools in 16 poor urban and rural areas. So far NetDay is working with 37 schools to develop their technology infrastructure, determine the educational goals they hope to achieve with their technology programs, and train teachers to integrate software and the Internet into their lessons. The organization hopes to expand the project to the remaining schools early next year.
NetDay’s other new project is to create an online database of educational technology resources, which will be available at the beginning of the next school year.
Items in the database, which NetDay calls the Educational Technology Knowledge Map, will be organized into 10 categories, such as technology planning, hardware, classroom content, and connectivity.
To get there: Go to http://www.netday.org.
