A few days ago, I shared information about a new partnership between the Texas Education Agency and the New York Times. The name of the partnership is “PROJECT SHARE.”

Other organizations–such as the Institute of Texan Cultures (ITC) in San Antonio–are also considering partnering with the New York Times to obtain access to the rich media resources available.

Lori Gracey (TCEA Executive Director) recently shared the following information worth disseminating:

TCEA is hosting a training today and tomorrow by TEA for the ESCs on Project Share, the new initiative that will build a portal system to expand the development and delivery of high-quality professional development in an interactive and engaging learning process across the state. Below are some things that I learned about this system that I thought might be of value to you. The information is from the presentation done by Anita Givens.

Project Share will provide access to online resources, online course content, academic networking, and professional learning communities. It will also provide opportunities for extensive interactions among teachers and students, product sharing through ePortfolios, and new forms of evaluation through online student assessment.

Phase 1:

1. Shareholders

· Authors of Professional Development Content

o Education Service Centers

o Institutes of Higher Education

o Educators

· Teachers and Administrators

o Online PD participants

o Professional learning communities participants

o ePortfolio pilot participants

2. Shareholder Participation – Shareholders will receive:

· Invitations to participate at one or more levels

· Access to resources, including the New York Times Knowledge Network (text, audio, video, images, webcasts)

· Frequent communication with moderators and/or other group members

· Feedback and ideas from other group members

3. Professional Development

· Leverage a multimedia approach

· Portal through which educators can collaborate, share, and tailor professional development based on individual needs

· Science, Math, ELA, and CTE TEKS

· English Language Proficiency Standards (ELPS)

· College and Career Readiness Standards (CCRS)

4. Professional Learning Communities (PLCs)

· Discussions, collaboration, and sharing among educators

· Ongoing learning opportunities for PD participants

5. Access to Digital Content – to provide access to a variety of repositories for use in professional development and classroom instruction

6. Planning for ePortfolio Pilots

· Explore student portfolios of coursework (essays, research papers, audio and video files of academic presentations and artistic performances), and other examples of academic and extra-curricular activities

· Spring 2010 planning. A request for statement of interest will be coming soon to districts.

· Selected shareholders:

o Educators

o Assessment experts

o ePortfolio experts

7. Planning for ePortfolio Assessment – to explore new forms of evaluation of student work to estimate college readiness

Phase 2:

1. Launch ePortfolio pilots

· ePortfolio pilot projects to explore building student portfolios to showcase work representing a wide range of student capabilities

· ePortfolio assessment pilot to explore a system to review student work to estimate college readiness

2. Expand digital content

· State-owned open source

· Statewide licenses

3. Develop and deliver online courses

The portal will be powered by Epsilen, which has a full suite of tools and resources. Some of those tools include blogs, wikis, email, chat, drop boxes, discussion, tests and quizzes, gradebook, rubrics, and many, many more. It can import courses from Moodle as well. The portal will provide access for students, but not until next school year.

TEA will unveil Phase 1 of the portal at Midwinter in January. There will also be numerous presentations about it at TCEA in February. At this point, school districts do not have access; they will receive information from their service centers in the new year about logins and passwords.

As I learn more about this, I will continue to update you.

Lori Gracey

Executive Director

Texas Computer Education Association

(512) 450-5400

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