On January 15, 2010, WHRO and its HRETA owner schools were awarded an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 Enhancing Education Through Technology Grant (ARRA E2T2) in the amount of $2,539,502.89. The primary goal of the E2T2 program is to improve student achievement through the use of technology in elementary and secondary schools. Additional goals include helping all students become technologically literate by the end of the eighth grade and, through the integration of technology with both teacher training and curriculum development, establishing research-based instructional methods that can be widely implemented.

WHRO Technology Consortium grant funds will be used to:

• Complete the development of leading-edge, media rich, online student courses including Astronomy; Chemistry; World Geography; World History I and II; Oceanography; Physics; Health P/E 9 and 10. Specific “rich media” elements to be developed include audio and video segments, mobile device applications, augmented reality, interactive Flash elements, podcasts, games, and simulations that will also be made available as “stand alone” learning objects through VideoClassroom™, Virginia on iTunes U and the Virginia Content Repository, among others.
• Develop an online diagnostic self-assessment for students to help identify and correct areas of weakness to assure technology proficiency by grade 8.
  Offer an “Online Teaching Methodology” professional development course to provide teachers with the skills they need to be successful teachers in the online K-12 environment.
• Purchase digital rights in perpetuity, digitize, segment, correlate to Virginia standards, and upload an additional 150 hours of high-need content to VideoClassroom™ and tightly integrate that content into the courses being developed.
• Provide official PBS TeacherLine ISTE NETS•T Certification, including graduate credit if desired, to up to 200 Instructional Technology Resource Teachers and other technology integration leaders.
• Provide PBS TeacherLine Peer Connection (an online resource that combines online communication and collaboration with valuable content to provide a rich, flexible set of tools to help instructional coaches search for appropriate professional development resources and share with the educators they’re coaching) to all ITRTs and other technology integration leaders statewide.

For more specific information on these activities, please visit the Products/Services section of this web site. General questions can be directed to Brian Callahan .