EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY NEWS
From the New Hampshire Department of
Education
Office of Educational Technology
Date: March 14, 2002
Volume: 2002.03.01
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SPECIAL ISSUE
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Local
Technology Plans and New Federal Technology Funding
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As many
of you are aware, the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Act has
been held up in Washington for several months.
Our office recently received enough information about the new No Child
Left Behind legislation, signed into law in January 2002, to begin to formulate
action steps for our state.
Many of
you have used our online Technology Planning Guide, located at www.nheon.org/oet/tpguide and the
accompanying tech plan approval rubric available at the same location. As we suspected, the new legislation forced
changes in the requirements for the next five years of technology
funding. We are going to have to add a few more required elements for
district technology plans, in order to make school districts eligible for
federal funding. Many districts have
been revising their technology plans for re-approval. Approximately one third of NH districts have
submitted new plans in the past year.
The remainder have expired plans which will need to incorporate the new
plan elements. Those plans which were
approved during this year will require an addendum, the details of which we
will outline as soon as possible.
Our
office is committed to making the process of plan approval as simple as
possible for school districts. Please understand that, at the state level,
we are trying to keep up with the changes as well. Until we release the final version of the
State Educational Technology Plan to the USDOE for approval, we will not be
making any additional requirements of the districts.
Our
action steps for the coming months are as follows:
March –
June
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We will
be engaged in conversations with various organizations and individuals to
update the State Educational Technology Plan.
The current plan is located at www.nheon.org/oet/stateplan.
We will post updates to the state plan as they are completed. Once we know the requirements in the new plan
are approved by the USDOE, we will give school districts a window of time to
correlate their existing plans with the new requirements and, if necessary,
provide us with an addendum.
As part
of the revision process, we are looking for people able to assist communication
between our office and various stakeholder groups. If you, or someone you know,
is a representative of a particular stakeholder group and has the time to
devote to several meetings around this effort, please send contact information
to us at chiggins@ed.state.nh.us.
The
school building Technology Survey 2002 will be available online this Spring. We will be
sending out information to you via this distribution list so that you can
complete those reports. All school
buildings within a district must complete this survey in order to be eligible
for technology funds administered through our office.
July -
August
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NHDOE
will develop an application packet for districts to apply for technology
funding. The application is expected to be made available in early Fall
2002. We will also be updating the
online Technology Planning Guide before the application packet is released.
Fall 2002
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After
applications are reviewed, we will make awards announcements as soon as
possible. Thus, we hope to have funding available to districts before the end
of 2002.
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Regards,
Cathy
Higgins
for the staff at the NHDOE Office of Educational Technology
*** Visit
us on the NHEON.ORG web site at http://nheon.org