Ohio schools are making great efforts to successfully integrate technologies into the classroom. An example of this is the impressive response that eTech Ohio received to the Competitive Professional Development Grant Request for Proposals. The proposals have been reviewed and scored, and the eTech Ohio Commission is pleased to award the FY08-09 grants to the following schools.

eTech Ohio is grateful to the many teachers, principals, curriculum directors, technology coordinators and technology integrationists who wrote thoughtful, interesting and innovative proposals on how to utilize emerging technology to address their academic needs. The passion, commitment and excitement of the teachers in planning ways to increase student achievement were evident in every application. We hope all the applicants will pursue alternative means to carry-out their proposed projects and assist students in their schools.

Request for Proposals

In order to meet the legislative charge eTech Ohio will again provide a two-year competitive grant to school districts. For the FY08-09 grant cycle, recipients will be 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 will support 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 will learn to use 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. eTech Ohio will work with the teachers involved in the grant to develop templates that address their needs for implementing ePortfolios with their students. Beginning in the fall of 2008, the teachers will implement 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.

• All Ohio public school districts are eligible to apply for this competitive grant.
• The grant will be limited to teachers and their respective students in grades 9, 10, 11 or 12.
• Teachers must have participated in one of the scheduled Technical Assistance Audio Conferences prior to applying.
• The school building must have completed the 2008 BETA survey prior to grant application deadline.

As part of this two-year grant, school building(s) within a district may apply for up to $20,000 with a plan for how ePortfolios will be used to integrate technology and support the state academic content standards. At most one building per district may be awarded. Priority will be given to those districts in academic emergency, academic watch or continuous improvement.

• A minimum of one or a maximum of two teachers from a school building may jointly apply for a grant.
• Teachers must participate in a Technical Assistance Audio prior to applying for the grant.
• The building principal, technology coordinator, instructional integrationist and/or curriculum director from the school must be supportive of the teachers' use of ePortfolios.
• The superintendent must sign a letter of support and must also agree that they will obtain a data release from each parent of those students who will be creating ePortfolios.

If selected, all teachers participating in the grant will be expected to:

• Attend the face-to-face orientation on February 5, 2008, at the eTech Ohio Educational Technology Conference in Columbus;
• Participate in several professional development (PD) offerings on Sakai and OSP provided by eTech Ohio;
• Use technologies to document and save samples of learning through the creation and saving of audio files, video files and text files; and, if necessary, seek and participate in professional development in the use and integration of technologies to document and save samples of learning through the creation and saving of audio files, video files and text files;
• Participate in focus groups for template development to be used in OSP;
• Create and use ePortfolios in OSP to document technology integration and student use of OSP and use the supported browsers/OS combinations (See Appendix C);
• Implement ePortfolios, using OSP, in the classroom with a selected number of students;
• Share findings, reflections and artifacts within the teacher ePortfolio via the eTech Ohio website;
• Complete a final impact report;
• Attend several events in Columbus including, but not limited to, February 5, February 22, June 17 and August 14, 2008;
• Present findings at the 2009 eTech Ohio Educational Technology Conference, February 2-4, 2009.