Program Overview
Pursuant to HB 119, of the 127th Ohio General Assembly, eTech Ohio is legislatively charged with providing up to $200,000 in each fiscal year to fund competitive professional development grants to school districts. These grants must focus on developing innovative programs that enhance teachers' abilities to use innovative methods for integrating technology to implement state academic content standards in classroom lessons. Pursuant to the legislation, grant requirements and awards are to be approved by eTech Ohio, with priority given to school districts designated in academic emergency, academic watch or continuous improvement.
For the FY08-09 grant cycle, recipients are focusing on creating and using electronic portfolios (ePortfolios) to collect examples of, reflect upon, and to demonstrate their ability to integrate technology to support state academic content standards.
This grant supports teachers' use of ePortfolios in grades 9-12 and is consistent with the direction of higher education. The grant will serve as a pilot to determine how to best provide students with a sound understanding of and the skills to use ePortfolios in grades 9-12 and as they move on to college using an open source application called Open Source Portfolio (OSP).
During the grant, teachers are using OSP as a means to demonstrate their own learning and growth in the integration of technology and to enable collaboration and sharing of teaching practices, lessons learned. The teachers are also implementing ePortfolios using OSP in their classrooms as a way for a selected number of students to collect, reflect upon and share their growth and learning.
At this time, there are no plans for a FY10-11 eTech Competitive Professional Development Grant.