Prospectus

=Prospectus (Complete version)=

//21 c. goals?? Introduction//
A commonly held statistic is that approximately 50% of new teachers leave the profession within five years. The most commonly cited issue (says NEA?) is "need for support." Museums and libraries are creating wonderful new digital resources and curricular materials, but these are scattered across the World Wide Web. (Teachers aren't accessing them.) Project Athena will connect teachers and school media specialists to the wealth of primary sources and curricular materials made available on the World Wide Web by libraries and museums. Although projects such as the Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM) ...

The goals are (bullets or a couple sentences): The University of Maryland will lead the project and ensure continuity throughout and following the grant period. Something about partners. Something about the phases of the project and how the partners will be included (in a couple of sentences or bullets).
 * Goals
 * Goals
 * Goals

Project Athena will build on the best practices in existing curriculum repositories but bring in the power of social networking and community building tools to increase traffic and use of materials as well as the overall benefits to teachers and students. We will work closely with teachers at our partner schools to develop and test the specific features, which may include blah, blah, and blah.

Our measurable outcomes will include: Conclusion, conclusion, conclusion.
 * xx amount more use of resources posted
 * xx workshops taught online

//Assessment of Need//
More than ever before, the quality of education in the United States is a hot-button issue that is in the spotlight on an international stage. Especially since the introduction of controversial legislation like No Child Left Behind, teachers and educators across the nation are under pressure to measure their level of success by producing test scores, the results of which have dramatic impacts on (career, reputation, funding, achievement, recognition). At the center of this is a curriculum which. Research consistently shows that time and ? are chief among the concerns of educators. Higher teacher turnover (burnout rates) has been attributed to factors related to time, support and preparation. Where testing is highly standardized, but no consistency in how the material will be taught.

While the demands on teachers are dramatically increasing, the amount of information and resources has not. Despite the irrefutable evidence which shows that teachers and educators feel they do not have the resources necessary to achieve the national standards set forth. In research studies, teachers often cite an overwhelming dearth of quality resources to support their curriculums. Teachers are spending increasing amounts of time out of their classrooms (need help with wording) overwhelmed in paperwork which includes preparation of lessons, extensive testing/grading documentation, and ? Commenting on the time she spends preparing for lessons, one teacher remarked “supporting Quote”

An authoritative collection of digital resources would serve the needs of educators across the nation. Has the potential to benefit anyone involved in education, regardless of location, etc.


 * Primary audience= educators**
 * Teachers whose education lacked enough coursework in finding, selecting, and evaluating materials. This can apply to new teachers or veterans
 * Educators in settings like home schooling environments or private institutions, for whom a typical structure who don’t have an official support structure (not the right phrasing)
 * Special subject educators/ESOL educators/resource teachers/vo-tech teachers/special education teachers*
 * Media specialists/technology educators
 * Student teachers/Teachers aides/assistants/tutors who are also responsible for locating and using materials for lessons
 * Instructors who are increasingly accountable for differentiated instruction, tailoring lesson materials to students with specific needs or challenges.


 * Secondary Beneficiary:**
 * students who are gaining in 21st century technology skills
 * museums and libraries, who will increase their material use (physical and virtual traffic) and increase visibility through collaborations with schools

And here’s why (key benefits)
How could these be broken down into broader, but focused categories?
 * Save time (less teacher burnout) and decrease stress/workload of overburdened teachers. Would decreasing redundancy (constant recreating of the wheel) fit in here
 * Empower educators who will gain confidence in ability to navigate, utilize (just for you, Stacy ;), and apply web resources
 * Decrease anxiety of (many are afraid of technology, some self admitted because they a. saw many computer labs and media centers that were underutilized (!) by teachers because they didn’t know how to use technology, or expressed that they didn’t have the time to test it out). Due to the lack of use, administration perceived these services (and the space and staff that go along with them—i.e. media specialists) as lower priority
 * Value-- Raise awareness and visibility of media centers/media specialist/libraries/museums (project will demonstrate their essential role in 21st century education)
 * Help eliminate/combat and level the playing field for students (possible example= resources available in other languages/ESOL students, many who are required, yet unprepared to test). Huge variation from school to school (or in counties/states) in prioritizing the use of technology in the classroom, much of which is guided by the interests of the top administrators in the particular school—so even though students are tested on the exact same material, they are not necessarily exposed to the same level of instruction. In the absence of a universal source to pull online resources, policies are often individually created by schools. For example, some principals do not allow the use of certain websites, while others do
 * Commitment to accountability (could help shape future education legislation, policy, and standards)… curriculum designed with a tool/resource to support them. Materials

//National Impact and Intended Results//
Libraries and museums are increasingly digitizing selections from their collections and making them available to the public through the Internet. There are countless examples of this, including the New York Public Library Digital Gallery ([]), Duke University Libraries’ Ad*Access ([]), and the Philadelphia Museum of Art ([]). Some institutions have created their own educational resources to encourage and increase the use of these collections in classrooms: Library of Congress’ The Learning Page ([]), Smithsonian Education ([]), Museum of Modern Art’s Modern Teachers ([]). This project would facilitate the use of those resources already created as well as facilitating the creation of new, educator-generated resources. Several institutions have agreed to support this project by providing their educational resources and digital collections as the base. Over time, additional resources and collections will be brought in by educators and the institutions themselves.

For educators, this project will create a dynamic space where information can be shared and relationships formed. The specific features will be determined through research and collaboration with educators, but may include While this project will initially focus on resources for grades 6-12, over time this will be expanded to K-5, and possibly to pre-K and adult education.
 * Educators contributing and tweaking lesson plans
 * User reviews of lesson plans
 * Forum for discussion and collaboration (e.g. collaborative projects between classes at different schools)
 * Online workshops run by teachers for teachers, or run by museums or libraries to promote the use of their materials

This project will connect educators nationwide to each other and to the multitude of primary sources made available digitally by libraries and museums, for the purpose of providing their students with richer learning experiences.

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 * Goals:** Determining the best way to structure Project Athena in order to make it easy to use and deciding what collaborative Web 2.0 features teachers and other audience members are most likely to use effectively.======

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 * Activities:** Focus groups with potential users (teachers, school media specialists, representative from home schooling group, staff creating the plans at museums and libraries), continued research on information seeking behavior of teachers, establishing the standards for submissions, establishing what educational standards the lessons should be addressing (local, federal, what standard it meets should be included in the results of a search), begin discussions with web developers. Finalizing collaboration agreements and contributions.======

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 * Activities:** Constant meetings with developers to finalize design, continued focus group/surveys/etc to insure that the design meets their needs, testing of site services as they come online, using the standards for submissions to vet materials provided by partner organizations (do we need to list these?), collection building, establishing a marketing strategy======

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 * Goals:** Launch beta site and minimize the bugs prior to full scale launch-better wording ======

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 * Activities:** training sessions for new users, communicating with collaborators on how the site is being used, surveying/observing users, collecting usage data, reworking areas that need improvement, continued collection development, assigning Project Athena staff to encourage collaboration between users or better educate users on these capabilities, further implementation of marketing strategy======

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 * Activities:** launch kick-off celebration, marketing strategy in full effect, continual opportunities for feedback from users, site maintenance, collection building, Project Athena staff still helping to foster collaboration======

Phases of project (older version)
Our project will result in a internet based platform for organizing (e.g. creating metadata for the records so that searching for them in a numbers of ways more efficient), vetting ? , storing lesson plans generated by teachers, libraries, and museums. Initially lesson plans will focus on humanities subjects. The site will not simply be another searchable repository of information as we intend to foster collaboration and community between the teachers, information professionals, and others who use the site. This will be encouraged through the use of Web 2.0 technologies that all the users to communicate how they feel about lessons, how they have adapted them, etc.

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Goals: Determining the best way to structure the site in order to make it easy to use and a place where users collaborate.======

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Activities: Focus groups with potential users (especially those from pilot schools), continued research on information seeking behavior of teachers, creation of a standards for lesson plans to be included (based on national standards and teacher input), begin discussions with web developers======

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Goals: Designing constructing the site ======

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Activities: Constant meetings with developers to finalize design, continued focus group/surveys/etc to insure that the design meets their needs, testing of site services as they come online, building the collection of lesson plans (how?), designing a marketing strategy======

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Goals: launch the site and minimize the bugs prior to full scale launch-better wording ======

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Expected Results: finalized version of site with continued opportunities for user feedback and integration of it.======

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Activities: Marketing of site, fundraising, continual evaluation of site, technical support, continual usage statistics and exit surveys======

Once the infrastructure is in place, we expect this to become more of a grassroots powered initiative. Teachers and school librarians will contribute links to other resources they find important, rate and comment on existing curriculum, and use the social and professional networking tools on the site; libraries and museums will have an incentive to place their materials on the site so as to promote their use.
 * Sustainability and Dissemination**