Accomplishments

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Administration Accomplishments in Education and Technology

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Administration Accomplishments in Education and Technology

The Clinton Administration has made an unprecedented commitment to bringing technology into the classroom. As a central element of the President's lifelong learning agenda, the Administration believes that technology can help expand opportunities for American children to improve their skills, maximize their potential, and ready them for the 21st century workforce.

Technology Learning Challenge

The Clinton Administration has initiated a "Technology Learning Challenge," to challenge communities to form partnerships of local school systems, students, colleges, universities and private businesses to develop creative new ways to use technology for learning. Each grant focuses on integrating innovative learning technologies into curriculum and leverages federal dollars to establish local consortia of communities committed to school reform and technology integration. The Administration expects to award 19 grants for FY 95.

Connecting classrooms

Connecting schools is so important that the President and Vice President have made a connecting every classroom, library, hospital and hospital clinic to the National Information Infrastructure by the year 2000 a national priority. The Clinton Administration is working actively with Congress, the states, local governments, private industry, public interest groups and the public groups themselves to achieve this goal.

Grants to schools through TIIAP

In 1994, the Clinton Administration created the TIIAP (Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program) which makes grants to public institutions to speed up the flow of information through the application of advanced communications technology. Through federal support and investment, TIIAP has accelerated the pace of connecting public institutions and has stimulated private sector investment. This program has enabled the federal government to leverage $24.4 million in federal funds to provide a total of $64.4 million in cutting-edge demonstration projects for public institutions. The program is so successful that there are 200 times more applications than there are grants.

AskERIC Program

In order to reach out to the teachers across the country, the Clinton Administration created the AskERIC service, which stands for the Educational Resources Information Clearing House Service. Educators are able to send questions through e-mail to askERIC, and receive a response within 48 hours. Educators can ask about lesson plans, educational techniques information on GOALS 2000 and so on. Every week 200 new questions come in, and the information that ERIC has made available on-line, such as sample lesson plans and answers to frequently asked questions is accessed more than 15,000 times a week.

Star Schools Program

The Star School's distance learning projects have helped to improve instruction in mathematics, science and foreign languages, literacy skills and vocational education. These distance learning projects serve under-served populations through partnerships that develop, construct, acquire, maintain and operate telecommunications audio and visual facilities and equipment, develop and acquire educational and instructional programming, and obtain technical assistance for the use of such facilities and instructional programming. More than one million students and their teachers in 50 states and territories participate in this program.

Connecting Students to the Environment

Vice President Gore initiated the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) Program in 1994. GLOBE joins students, educators and scientists in an international science and environmental education network using state-of-the-art technology. GLOBE students make environmental observations at or near their schools and share their data through the Internet. More than 2,000 schools in the U.S. are participating in GLOBE in 1995.

Assessing School Connectivity

The first national survey of schools access to broad band telecommunications and the Internet was completed in the Fall of 1994. A second national survey will be conducted in October, 1995 and will document the progress being made to link schools and classrooms.

Improving rural education and health care

The Administration's commitment to ensuring the wide dissemination of information has worked through the Rural Utilities Service Distance Learning and Medical Link (DLML) Grant Program, to improving education and health care for rural residents throughout the Nation. The program has already given hundreds of students attending rural schools in 28 states access to previously unavailable courses.

Teaching computer science skills

The Clinton Administration has worked through the Department of Energy's Computer Science Education Project (CSEP) to develop educational materials, including experimental syllabus for teaching interdisciplinary computational science. This information is available on the Internet and is also disseminated through training workshops for educators.

Regional Technology Consortia Grant Program

The Clinton Administration initiated the Regional Technology Consortia Grant Program authorizing $10 million in FY 95. Six consortia of technical assistance providers will be funded to help state, local educational agencies, teachers, administrators and others to integrate advanced technologies into K-12 grade classrooms, library media centers and other educational settings (including adult literacy centers). Consortia will establish and conduct regional activities that address professional development, technical assistance, and information resource dissemination to promote the effective use of technology in education.

National Plan for Technology in Education

Education Secretary Riley will submit a National Plan for Technology in Education to Congress in October. The report is the effort of hundreds of educators, citizens and industry leaders in seven regional forums, two national conferences and a on-line discussion over the Internet.

Rural telecommunications infrastructure

The Rural Utilities Service (RUS) administers grants and loan programs to assist rural and remote communities with the development of their communications infrastructure, including schools. Additionally, fifty-two K-12 school systems will be provided two-way interactive video services.

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