Coming out on top after a six-month statewide competition, three Pennsylvania
school districts have won up to $2 million each to integrate technology
into lessons.
Dubbed "Digital School Districts," the Carlisle Area School District in
Cumberland County, the Quaker Valley School District in Allegheny County
and the Spring Cove School District in Blair County won the competition,
Gov. Tom Ridge announced in February.
"What we hope to achieve is to build three models that the rest of Pennsylvania
can use [as] kind of living laboratories," said Al Bowman, a state Education
Department spokesman. "The big thing about technology, and the main challenge,
is that you really can't understand its possibilities until you see it in
action. They are going to be the R&D for the rest of the state maybe
the rest of the world.
Bowman said the winners have similar challenges
in implementing technology.
The Carlisle school district, which plans to create an education Web
portal for round-the-clock student tutoring, customized lessons and virtual
courses, encompasses urban, suburban and rural areas in one district. Bowman
said the challenge is figuring out how to connect and deliver education
to the different areas.
In the Quaker Valley district, students in third through 12th grades
will get wireless notebook computers and "eBooks" to download textbook chapters,
newspapers and books, along with 24-hour access to Internet learning resources.
Bowman said that district includes communities from extreme wealth to poverty.
He said Spring Cove, which will create a comprehensive educational resource
center with online courses and training for the community, is a rural school
district with great distances between schools and communities.
The districts — selected by a panel of international, national and state
education experts — will receive another $2 million next year. Seventy-seven
schools submitted applications last September. The list was whittled down
to 30 and then down to six finalists.
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