HOUSTON--Aug. 15, 2001—Some 6,000 K-12 students each year will benefit from more skilled teachers, thanks to a program aimed at providing teachers with advanced technology training.

TeacherTECH, developed by Rice University’s Center for Excellence and Equity in Education, is a professional development program conducted this summer in Houston, Boston and San Diego. In the coming months, the program will be expanded to even more cities across the country.

In June and July, more than 60 K-12 teachers in Houston, Boston and San Diego received one- or two-week training courses through TeacherTech to meet the following goals:

• To equip teachers with knowledge and strategies that will encourage full participation by all students — especially those from underrepresented groups — in computer technology, especially in scientific computing.
• To enable teachers to effectively use and produce web resources that support student learning.

“What makes this program so successful is the dedication of the teacher participants,” said Cynthia Lanius, executive director of Rice’s Center for Excellence and Equity in Education. “They sacrifice part of their well-deserved summer vacations in order to learn how to use technology more effectively in the classroom. They stay late and come early. And we have numerous stories of how the teachers then generate this enthusiasm back in the classroom with their students.”

The ultimate goal is students who understand and are able to use computer technology effectively.

“It's clear that we must prepare students to use technology as a scientific tool, and intensive, long-term professional development is a key component of how comfortable teachers will be using technology in this way.”

Expansion of the TeacherTECH program is made possible by the Verizon Foundation, with the aid of a $10,000 grant. In 2002, Lanius will work with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to expand the program to Chicago public schools.

“GirlTECH has been recognized locally as a quality program since its inception in 1995,” Lanius said. “We now have the potential, using the National Science Foundation’s Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure network of partners, to expand throughout the country. We are also looking for other sites that would be interested in hosting the program. Verizon’s contribution is helping to make this exciting idea possible.”

TeacherTECH is the teacher training component of Rice's GirlTECH program, which is made possible by support from the National Science Foundation through the Education, Outreach, and Training Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure, the RGK Foundation, the Verizon Foundation, Rice University, and Rice’s Center for High Performance Software.

—Lia Unrau