An interesting mix. The backgrounds of the advisory team include: A
textbook author who works for Microsoft and SouthWestern, a computer
science department chair from Idaho State University who leads the
Academic Cooperative, Several Department of Education Technology
leaders, Several vocational school directors and teachers, a couple of
community college teachers and a couple of high school teachers.
Turns out this advisory team was created and designed by the computer
industry as all the computer companies are desperate for skilled
programmers. Microsoft has 6,000 openings at this moment and all
companies have made the decision to help education encourage more
students to take programming and more challenging computer classes.
We worked on things that Microsoft could do for education. First step
was the decision that the Software grants which were only for Higher
Education are now open as collaboration projects between higher ed and
school districts. I'm going to approach DVC and Hayward for my own
district. Is there anyone out there who wants to help or take it on?
I'm also going to help develop teaching projects which will be given out
free to teachers. We developed a sequential list of classes and are
preparing course outlines and syllabus for them. They want all computer
classes covered but programming emphasized. Turns out programming
teachers are few and really need materials! (Like we didn't know!) So we
all have a lot to work on.
We will be meeting weekly through Netmeeting, which is free on the net.
You can see through video, hear through speakers, and either use the
chat or send other material that everyone can see. If any of you are
familiar with Timbucktoo, it is sort of like that. I believe it will be
an extremely valuable aide in my classroom as I will take control of
their computer!!! We will also have other real life meetings and the
next one is scheduled for October.
I hope you all put in for the software grants. There is also a wonderful
opportunity to buy all the programming software at a great price now. I
believe it is something like $440 for ten licenses of ms visual basic,
ms J++ and ms C++.
If you need any info, let me know.
Roseann Krane
roseann@krane.net