eTech Ohio Connections
Volume 2, Issue 3

Mission: To advance education and accelerate the learning of Ohioans through technology.

Visit the eTech Ohio website for the latest eTech Ohio news and information.

• What is Hall Pass? Hall Pass is eTech Ohio's single sign-on user account for its website. Hall Pass provides you access to online resources, such as timely, relevant email communications based on your interests and job responsibilities; online professional development registration; grant applications; certificates of participation for the State Technology Conference and other continuing education offered by eTech Ohio; access to the TPT online tool (for development and approval of your district's technology plan); access to the BETA Building Surveys (Biennial Education Technology Assessment); access to discounted technology products through the Equipment and Services Catalog; and more.
  
  To access more information on Hall Pass visit the eTech Ohio website.
  
  For additional information or technical support, please call 877.383.2406.

• THANK YOU to all who attended the 2006 State Technology Conference, February 13-15 2006, at the Greater Columbus Convention Center. Over 6,000 teachers, technology coordinators, administrators and others who are interested in improving education through the use of technology attended the three-day event. Final Conference numbers and statistics will be published on the Conference website later this month.
  
  
• Video- and Audio-on-Demand: Selected 2006 keynote, featured speaker and concurrent sessions are available as video- and audio-on-demand through the Conference website. Note that you will need Real Player in order to view videos and an MP3 player such as Microsoft Windows Media Player or QuickTime to listen to audio clips. Additional video and audio clips will be added to the Conference website in the coming weeks.
  
  
• Event Schedule: Documents, handouts and presentations for many of the Conference 2006 sessions can be downloaded from the online Conference planner, Event Schedule. Please note that while eTech Ohio strongly encourages all presenters to upload their session materials, it cannot guarantee that materials will be available for every session.
  
  
• 2007 eTech Ohio Educational Technology Conference: Mark your calendars! Conference 2007 is scheduled for February 12, 13 and 14, 2007, at the Greater Columbus Convention Center. Registration, Call for Volunteers and Call for Proposals will be available in May 2006.
  
  
• 2007 Exhibition Space: Interested in exhibiting during Conference 2007? Email us for information about available booth space and rates.
  
  Inquiries about the State Technology Conference should be directed to the Conference Team at 1.877.383.2406.

• Grant Announcement - Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT)/Title II-D:

• Continuation Grants - All 2005-2006 EETT new grant recipients are eligible for the 2006-2007 continuation grants. Eligible recipients will apply through the Comprehensive Continuous Improvement Plan (CCIP) competitive funding application. Allocation amounts and the RFP for continuation grants have been released. Deadline for the letter of intent is Friday, March 17, 2006, at 11:30 am EST. Applications without letters of intent will not be accepted or read. Deadline for application of EETT continuation grants and all additional documents is Friday, April 28, 2006.
  
  
• New Grants - A list of eligible buildings for the 2006-2007 new grants has been released. Only those buildings listed will be eligible to apply for the 2006-2007 EETT competitive grants. Eligible buildings serve K-8 students and are determined by Title I status, ODE report card status (Academic Emergency/Academic Watch in grades 4 and 6 for mathematics and English/language arts) and technology capacity.
  
  Eligible buildings will apply through the Comprehensive Continuous Improvement Plan (CCIP) competitive funding application. The RFP for new EETT grants will be released in mid-March. Please do not apply for the 2006-2007 EETT new recipients grants until the RFP has been released. The RFP will contain specific guidance in applying for the grant and the evaluation of those grants. If your building applies prior to the release of the RFP, your building's application may not be accurate or complete based upon the requirements outlined in the RFP. Deadline for application of EETT new grants and all additional documents is Friday, April 28, 2006.
  
  Regional Vendor Information Session will be held March 16, March 20, March 21 and March 23, 2006, and will be open to only those on the new eligibility list. Please visit the EETT website for specific details and registration. Registration is now open through Monday, March 13, 2006, at 4:45 pm EST.

Visit the EETT home page or contact education liaison Jill Abbott or coordinator Verda McCoy at 1.877.383.2406 for more information.

• eTech Ohio is proud to announce the release of BETA06-07 Building and Teacher Survey results. After a collection period that generated over 95,000 Teacher Survey responses and 3,600 Building Survey responses, the data has now been tabulated, corrected, aggregated and sliced.
  
  Visit the BETA website to see the new Reporting Comparison tool that allows you to compare BETA06-07 results for any Ohio public school building or district to as many as four other buildings, districts, counties or the statewide average.
  
  In addition, BETA administrators can access the Data Export tool to download their survey results directly to perform additional analysis of the BETA results for their building or district.
  
  If you would like assistance with either the Comparison tool or the Data Export tool you can contact your eTech Ohio field representative or the eTech Ohio customer service desk at 877.383.2406.

• eTech Ohio, in collaboration with the Management Council of the Ohio Education Computer Network (MCOECN), will host the Spring 2006 Technology Training Academy (TTA) the first three weeks of May. The TTA provides K-12 district technology staff the opportunity to participate in highly specialized, advanced training about network hardware, application software and operating systems to acquire knowledge and skill sets recognized by industry standards for foundation-level informational (IT) skills that lead to certification.
  
  Courses are taught by nationally recognized, manufacturer certified trainers and are hosted at various K-12 district sites, Information Technology Sites (ITCs, formerly known as DA-Sites) and vendor training sites across the state.
  
  Registration is currently open. Information about course offerings, training locations and registration for select courses is available on the eTech Ohio website.

• Through Wave 30 of the 2005-06 funding year, Ohio applicants have received $56.6M in E-Rate discount awards.  Total funding to date for Ohio is over $515M.  Funding waves are being announced by the Schools and Libraries Division (SLD) program administrators every week.  Internal connections funding awards remain at the 90% level only.
  
  
• The Form 471 filing opportunity for Funding Year 2006-2007 was officially closed on Thursday, February 16, 2006 (11:59 PM, postmark date.)  Congratulations to all who successfully submitted and certified your district's Form 471 funding request applications!
  
  
• eTech Ohio provides E-Rate program support including technology planning, annual workshops, listserv news and information, and individual problem resolution.  We look forward to providing personalized E-Rate support throughout the upcoming Funding Year!
  
  For more information on the federal E-Rate program contact Dan Farslow at 1.877.383.2406.

• Visit eTech's new action research resource! eTech Ohio has created a new resource that provides information about action research and shares findings from studies conducted through the Action Research and Technology online course offered by eTech Ohio. The site explains what action research is, how teachers can get involved in action research and provides the study reports from teachers who participated in the course as well as brief interviews with the facilitator and a participant.
  
  For additional information, contact educational technology consultant Sandra Paxton at 877.383.2406.

• Learning from medical researchers, watching spaceships being launched from NASA, talking with scientists about new inventions - these are only a few of many possible opportunities that will be available for Ohio's K-12 students by connecting to the Third Frontier Network (TFN).
  
  On Monday, February 27, Toledo Public Schools and Scioto Valley Local Schools connected to the TFN, the most advanced statewide, fiber-optic network for education, research and economic development in the country. The K-12 and higher education network is the first of its kind in the nation.
  
  Education and government leaders gathered at the Ohio Supercomputer Center in Columbus, Woodward High School in Toledo and Piketon Junior/Senior High School in Piketon for a lighting ceremony to officially connect the districts to the network. The event featured live videoconferencing among the three locations.
  
  Launched in 2004, the TFN has connected Ohio's colleges and universities to business partners, hospitals and Ohio's federal labs. The TFN provides a dedicated high-speed connection to Internet2 and the National Lambda Rail, national high-performance backbone information technology networks.
  
  By Sept. 30, 2006, Ohio's 23 Information Technology Centers as well as the city school districts in Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Youngstown will be connected to the TFN. Visit the TFN home page for more information or to download a video of the lighting ceremony.

• The Ohio Educational Television Stations were organized, chartered and continue to operate with the mission to provide education to Ohio's citizens. The stations began decades ago, with over the air instruction, then progressed on through videotapes, DVDs, videoconferencing, video-on-demand and online interactive modules. Stations continue to develop new material and to reversion existing material to provide resources to schools and homes in Ohio, serving as a link between the education field and the community.
  
  
• Think TV has developed a school-to-careers project, Engineering Your Future, designed to encourage middle school students to take upper level science and math classes, and to consider careers in engineering or related fields. The project website features streaming audio and video profiles of engineers discussing their fields. Video profiles will also be distributed through the Chalkwaves Ohio media-on-demand collection, as well as on DVD to educators in the Miami Valley. This is the first year of a three-year project.
  
  
• Another online service provided is PBS Teacherline, offered to K-12 teachers in the ThinkTV service area of 12 counties in southwest Ohio. In addition, the station uses it broadcasts facilities 282 hours a year to present the GED course in English, and 188 hours to present the course in Spanish. They also broadcast the Annenberg Teacher Channel, with resource and college courses, 4,229 hours each year.
  
  
• In their New Millennium Kids programming WNEO presented:
  
  
  • You Be the Producer
  • Shortcuts to Happiness: The Performing Arts
  • A series of four conferences using the Broadway series at E.J.\Thomas Hall in Akron and Carousel Dinner Theater.
    
    
• WOSU is working with the Ohio Emergency Management Agency and eTech Ohio in developing a project using broadcast television datacasting as the backbone of the state's emergency message system. The system distributes information through the eTech Ohio fiber network to Ohio PTV stations, which use a portion of their digital signals to transmit the messages on to the radio EAS originating stations.
  
  Working with its Ed tech partner, ITSCO, WOSU presented "Top 10 Tricks to Help Your Video Look Better": Content for the Classroom Offered via Distance Learning.
  
  
• "What's Your (Math) Problem," a math game show for sixth-graders, was conceived through a partnership between WVIZ /PBS ideastream and the Cleveland Municipal School District, in an effort to develop an educational media experience that could positively affect student achievement and interest in mathematics during a critical period in a child's development when mathematics interest typically fades and skills begin to erode. "What's Your (Math) Problem" is a comprehensive, standards-based program that also contains professional development for teachers, a CD-Rom simulation for practice and testing and a website containing teacher materials, program schedules, order forms for program videos and many action pictures of each of the programs in the series - which also helps to generate interest and support from the students' families.
  
  Through the utilization of videoconferencing equipment, WVIZ/PBS and NOTA offer career-based programs to schools across the State of Ohio. These interactive programs feature career opportunities for both college and non-college bound students. Career topics range from neurosurgeons to graphic designers to electricians. Programs are offered every other week throughout the school year. Approximately 200-300 students participate in each program.
  
  
• The WOUB Center for Public Media's distance learning network (Ohio University Learning Network or OULN) provides undergraduate and graduate classes to the five regional campuses, Lancaster, Zanesville, Chillicothe, Ironton and Eastern to the Pickerington Center and several outside universities. Courses are available to help students at Ohio University's regional campuses and students at other universities complete course requirements toward a degree program. Current systems include a Microwave system that has connected Ohio University's regional campuses since the early 1980s. This service offers full-motion video to the regional campuses over a line-of-sight tower system. A Compressed Video system is used to connect to regional campuses, other universities, and businesses. ISDN and IP connections are utilized via this system. Currently courses are not streamed, but a plan is in place to offer this service. Several classes or events have been made available online on a case-by-case basis, including some classes internationally. The WOUB Center for Public Media is currently researching new technologies to update the distance learning systems and a plan is in progress to implement some new systems within the next year.
  
  
• Over the last two years, WGTE has been involved in the development and implementation of several career-based distance learning programs. To address the automotive career needs, WGTE created 12 video modules on the various automotive career cluster occupations. Our crew was allowed into the Toledo GM-Powertrain plant to film and interview various employees concerning the nature of their jobs, their training and education and the rewards they experience being a part of the US auto industry. The occupations ranged from line workers, union representatives, engineers and trainers to human resources, employee assistance and physical plant maintenance. The Toledo plant manufactures the automatic transmissions for all of GM's rear-wheel-drive vehicles, including its pick-up trucks and the Corvette. As part of this project, WGTE conducted two, one-hour videoconferences featuring six individuals from the plant, including upper management, union representatives and human resources.
  
  
• WGTE also hosted one-hour videoconferences that featured local government officials. The guests spoke not only about their function in government but also about their interests as children that led them to pursue their current vocations. Included in these sessions was the Sheriff of Lucas County, James Telb, Ph.D.; President of the Lucas County Commissioners, Tina Skeldon-Wozniak; and Lucas County Probate Court Judge, Jack R. Puffenberger.
  
  WGTE continues its program development efforts and is currently working on career cluster models for the construction industry, health care field and science-based careers.
  
  In addition, during the past school year, WGTE was designated primary distance learning content provider for Toledo Public Schools:
  
  
  • ATM and IP - Mathematics and Science; grades 7-12, coordinated two sessions between faculty at University of Toledo and approximately 30 students in two high schools in Toledo Public Schools.
    
    
  • Science; grades 9-12, provided access to Colonial Williamsburg Distance Learning sessions for area schools.
    
    
  • Facilitated implementation of Interactive Video Distance Learning (IVDL) for Toledo Public Schools through live test sessions (over 50 sessions).
    
    
  • Provided on-site training for 37 people, including faculty, media coordinators and administrators, in Toledo Public Schools on use of interactive video distance learning equipment (three, two-hour sessions).