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April 10, 2000
$3.5 MILLION GRANT TO WSC, AREA SCHOOL DISTRICTS
A $3.5 million grant from the U.S. Office of Education will
help six rural and remote southwestern Colorado school districts
take a giant step toward implementing 21st Century technology
into their curriculums with help from Western State College
in Gunnison. The grant will provide technology to link the
schools districts and will fund on-site training for teachers
by Western State College faculty.
The project, entitled The Rural Mountain Organization for
Technological Enhancement (RMOTE), will be headquartered at
Western and include school districts in Gunnison, Hinsdale
(Lake City), Ridgway, Ouray, Mountain Valley (Saguache), and
Moffat. RMOTE is the first entity in the state of Colorado
to receive this grant from the Department of Education.
The five-year project will focus on training teachers in
the six school districts to utilize technology effectively
in five curricular areas -- language arts, mathematics, science,
social studies and foreign languages. In addition, grant funds
will provide access and connectivity to modern telecommunications
technology to allow for more effective collaboration among
the schools in the consortium.
Dr. Frank Venturo, Associate Vice President for Academic
Affairs at Western State College, will be the project director.
He has been involved for several years in the initial development
of RMOTE activities.
The grant proposal was the brainchild three years ago of
Roger Neppl, then Superintendent of Schools in Hinsdale County,
and Janice Welborn-Downing, Western's Director of Sponsored
Programs and Grants. Neppl is now a Regional Service Coordinator
for the Colorado Department of Education. Although his region
encompasses northeast, north central and metropolitan areas
of the state, he will continue to work with RMOTE due to his
long association with the consortium.
Neppl and Welborn-Downing worked closely with Dr. Nella B.
Anderson, Assistant Professor of Teacher Education at Western,
and representatives from each of the school districts to plan
the related grant activities.
The Grant's Significance
Neppl said educational opportunities for teachers, students
and communities in the rural area of the southwestern part
of Colorado are severely hampered by three barriers - distance,
transportation and communication. "The high costs of
commuting make access to educational resources and training
difficult," he said. "Our rural teachers are limited
in their ability to participate in specialized education and
training because of the drive time to reach the Front Range
metropolitan areas, especially during the winter." He
said communication is an especially important element. "For
rural Colorado to compete in the 21st century, we have to
unify to attempt to stay on a par with urban areas."
Neppl said the truly innovative part of the project is found
in the method of delivery of staff development and training.
"Instead of removing teachers from their buildings, RMOTE
will deliver development activities to the teachers."
A staff development trainer will provide training for teachers
at the building level. This will be provided through collaboration
with Western State College which will provide the staff and
the training. "In this way," Neppl said, "new
knowledge will be immediately infused into the teachers' classrooms
with the trainer present to assist as necessary." Teachers
will have multiple training sessions through the year and
will have access to the trainer for on-going support.
The training will be conducted over a five-year period with
the focus on a different content area each year. As the training
progresses, the trained teachers will form cadres that will
continue to provide mentoring for other teachers in their
buildings and districts.
The teachers will meet as a team two weeks before the beginning
of the school year to receive common training based on a study
already completed. This team will plan ways they can communicate
with one another throughout the year.
Meeting Colorado Standards
Project Director Venturo has been involved with RMOTE since
its inception several years ago. "Teachers must learn
to integrate technology in the curriculum to help schools
meet the Colorado Technology Goals and the Colorado Content
Standards," he said. Venturo said the project will also
help schools provide instruction that might otherwise be impossible.
"We can have students in all six districts learning a
foreign language from the same instructor," he said.
"Technology will provide the tool for this kind of teaching
and learning, but it is the effective use of the technology
that is important. That's why the training part of the project
is so critical to RMOTE's ultimate success. Western is pleased
to be a part of it."
Welborn-Downing said the grant "provides additional
opportunities for the consortium to leverage the money to
develop new sources of funding for the RMOTE partnership."
She said RMOTE participants will work to coordinate activities
with other organizations providing similar services.
Neppl believes teachers and administrators are becoming more
sensitive to individual student needs and that these are often
more difficult to meet in remote areas where opportunities
for students are more limited. "We don't want communities
and schools to be disadvantaged because of their zip codes,"
Neppl said. RMOTE does away with many of the barriers that
have inhibited school districts throughout their history,
he said. Proper on-site training of teachers in how
to make the most effective use of technology will bring many
big-city opportunities to students in some of Colorado's rural
areas.
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