menubar -About INTEC

INTEC in a Nutshell:

Goal:
To support teachers directly in implementing the use of student investigations in mathematics and science at the middle and high school levels by offering a set of network-based high quality netcourses linking participants with exemplary NSF curriculum development efforts. 		Audience:
INTEC is designed around cross-disciplinary site-based teams of secondary and/or middle school science and math teachers. Teams must include an administrator. The professional development is aimed at schools and districts committed to educational reform, not individuals. Initial participants came from Arizona, California, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington State. 		Content:
Exemplary curricula, primarily selected from NSF-funded inquiry-based projects, provide the content core. Participants receive sets of materials, some of which contain software or equipment, in support of their study. Throughout the NetCourse participants will be challenged through curricula that include examination of recent discoveries or revisiting of older concepts represented and explored in novel ways.

Support for learning is provided by an expert moderator to facilitate discussion and a field expert in each project curriculum who has already used the material in a classroom.

The Medium:
The INTEC NetCourse implements a novel design. It combines face-to-face synchronous discussion with asynchronous moderated online discourse. The vehicle is a graphical browser. 		Duration:
INTEC offers a four-credit graduate level course over one academic year, starting in September 1998. 		Technology:
Our new Lotus DOMINO discussion server provides the highest level of interactivity to date on the web. Participants can exchange and view files of virtually any type and build web-based discussions without coding a line of HTML.

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Collaborators for the INTEC project:
Eleven collaborators representing a broad cross-section of American education form the initial partnerships for INTEC:
  • six Urban Systemic Initiatives
  • a Rural Systemic Initiative
  • three school districts
  • a Department of Energy National Lab
people meeting
Staff from these initial collaborators will select 450 participating teachers and will provide them with administrative and technical support to ensure that the inquiry-based learning taught through the NetCourse will be instituted, continued, and disseminated in schools and systems they service. An additional fifteen collaborators will be added during the project, allowing INTEC and its web-based professional development model to reach over 1,000 teachers.

Additional collaborators are being sought. If you are interested, contact Ray Rose, Educational Director, Concord Consortium, 37 Thoreau Street, Concord, Massachusetts 01742.

INTEC menubar
INTEC, A project of The Concord Consortium. Copyright © 1998, All rights reserved.