Presentation Slides - Jaap Tuinman

STEM~Net - Empowering the Students and Teachers of Newfoundland and Labrador

STEM~Net is about Robbie

(the student)

STEM~Net:

is a wide area (Internet) computer network for K-12 and rural public college educators in this province.
supports teachers efforts to improve teaching, learning, curriculum design and professional development.
is supported by the Human Resources Development Agreement, corporate partners, school boards and colleges, the Department of Education, the NLTA and Memorial University.

For an educational innovation to succeed, teachers must be at the core.

Teachers involved from the beginning:

1991 Hogan and Cake - concept & lobbying
1992 Teacher evaluation and endorsement
1992+ Tuinman and Weir
1992 NLnet teacher pilot
1992 Broad Consultations with teachers and others
1993 Program consultations with teachers
1993+ STEM~Net training for lead teachers
1994+ "gopher" training for teachers
1995 "web page development" training for teachers
1995 Province-wide consultation with educators

STEM~Net supports: on site inservice, with a focus on immediate applications.

The 21st Century Challenge: The Speed of Change

Managing "change" requires:

trust and authentic cooperation
meeting personal and professional needs.

STEM~Net Statistics: Within 20 months of operation, approximately 8500 accounts on system.

>80% of teachers have accounts
40% of these use them regularly
Each school day, there are approximately, 4000 accesses to system, 20,000 email transactions (~7000 messages), ,8000 STEM~Net WWW homepage accesses.

Computer and Communications technologies support a new model of "empowered " teachers

Yesterday's "monolithic" model was one teacher standing in front of one class to deliver one subject at a time. This was considered the ideal.

The new model shows a differentiation in the roles of teachers, changing to deal more effectively with content and children through the intervention of technology.

The "new" model will, among other features include:

more focus both on individualized learning goals and on team building and activities
the emergence of the "master teacher" as an educational team leader.
technology-oriented para-professional support.
an enhanced Socratic role for teachers.
increased interaction with parents and community
a technocratic impact on the curriculum.

STEM~Net is about Robbie