K-12Lead of the Week

The State of Arizona wishes to implement an elearning pilot program to deliver digital middle school mathematics content aligned to Arizona State Academic Standards. The program will provide the digital content with assessments for math grades 6 through 9 and use laptop computers. Professional development is a critical component of success for the project.... elearning is defined as: The use of electronic technologies or Information, Communication, Technology in education. ELearning may occur both in distance and conventional education and may involve electronic media that do not use online delivery....

The scope of the pilot will be limited to three full academic years for up to a maximum of 10 sites and 10,000 or fewer students. However, vendors must be able to provide a delivery system with the digital math content capable of scaling up to 50,000 students at over 225 districts and 450 charter schools at school and home....

Schools will be selected through an application process developed by the eLearning Taskforce in conjunction with the Arizona Department of Education. The selection process will ensure a representative sample of students reflecting, as close as possible, the state’s student population profile.

The number of participating sites and students will depend on the project’s cost per student and the available funds.

Laptops provided for the pilot must include wireless cards, meet the Arizona Government Information Technology Agency platform standards and match the platform standard (PCs or Mac) of the pilot schools.

The award will be based on the system that provides the highest quality digital content and professional development that focuses on effective teacher/student interaction.