Bell Atlantic Foundation Awards $510,000 to Link Massachusetts Students to the Future

Bell Atlantic Foundation Awards $510,000 to Link Massachusetts Students to the Future

Company Funds Projects in 60 Massachusetts Communities

April 3, 1998

BOSTON - Sixty Massachusetts communities will benefit from $510,000 in
grants awarded today by the Bell Atlantic Foundation for the creative
use of technology in education.

Students, teachers and administrators representing 60 Massachusetts
communities received the awards during a ceremony at Boston High
School featuring James Earl Jones, Bell Atlantic spokesman and
critically acclaimed actor.

"Twenty years ago, film producer George Lucas used leading edge
technology to propel audiences into a future galaxy, far far away,"
said Jones. "Today's Bell Atlantic winners will link Massachusetts
students to a future only a classroom away." Jones was the voice of
Darth Vader in the Star Wars movies produced by Lucas.

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino welcomed the winners to the city and
underscored the importance of technology in education. Boston High
School students and teachers showcased web sites they developed as
part of a project which will be expanded using one of the Bell
Atlantic Foundation EdLink grants announced today.

"We believe in inspiring educators and students to explore how
technology can be used to enhance learning, improve basic skills and
provide access to vast information resources," said Wayne Budd, Bell
Atlantic group president. "Given the power of today's technology
tools, the EdLink awards will help teachers better prepare students
for the 21st century." Budd hosted the ceremony with Jones.

Following the ceremony, Jones participated in a celebration of the
Boston Public Library's sesquicentennial by reading from the "The Lion
King" to an audience of children and their parents. Jones also
presented Mayor Menino with a $5,000 donation for ReadBoston, an
organization that supports children's literacy programs.

Bell Atlantic established the EdLink awards last year to support
emerging technological needs in education. This year, the program is
funding efforts to integrate technology into the K-12 core curriculum
so that teachers and students can use the power of technology to
explore new ways of thinking and to share new experiences.

The winning proposals promote collaboration among schools, teachers
and communities; increase teachers' and students' technology skills,
and develop models that can be used in other communities or schools.

In 1998, the Bell Atlantic Foundation will spend more than $1 million
on a variety of educational initiatives in Massachusetts. In
addition, Bell Atlantic also supports a variety of community projects
and company employees spend hundreds of hours volunteering on
educational programs throughout the Commonwealth.

The Bell Atlantic Foundation supports a variety of projects
domestically and internationally, with an emphasis on new technology
applications in education, health and human services, the arts and
humanities, and civic development in the communities served by Bell
Atlantic. For more information, visit www.bellatlanticfoundation.com
on the Internet.

1998 Bell Atlantic EdLink Awards: Connecting Massachusetts Students to the Future

Partnership Project Summaries

Alliance for Education

$40,000
(Auburn, Blackstone Valley Regional Vocational-Technical High School,
Westborough, West Boylston)

Teachers, students and parents will become part of an Internet-based
learning community focused on the seven Massachusetts curriculum
frameworks. Students will develop electronic portfolios demonstrating
how their work links to the frameworks. A professional development
component for teachers will include an introduction to quality
Internet-based curricula. Parents and other community members will
become engaged through workshops, e-mail distribution lists and
on-line chats with teachers, providing them with a better
understanding of their schools' progress toward meeting the goals of
education reform.

Boston Educational Development Foundation

$50,000
(Boston)

Six Boston high schools will expand their efforts to integrate
technology into school-to-career projects with electronic connections
to business partners. Training for headmasters, school-to-career
staff and school librarians will enable fuller use of technology in
the implementation of standards-based curriculum. The
school-to-career curriculum technology units developed will be
integrated into the district's curriculum website.

Cambridge School System
$40,000
(Cambridge, WGBH, Cambridge Office of Workforce Development, Beacon
Education Resources, Inc.)

Teams of teachers from all subject areas will work with the district's
Office of Educational Technology and three outside partners. They
will develop a series of courses which will allow 9th and 10th grade
students to develop and demonstrate proficiency in four required
technology skill areas within the context of core academic courses.
The project will promote the classroom integration of computers,
multi-media, telecommunications and the Internet to develop student
proficiency in research, data analysis, project design and report
production.

Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket School-to-Careers Partnership

$36,000
(Sandwich, Chatham, Harwich, Dennis, Yarmouth, Barnstable, Nantucket,
Nauset Regional, Martha's Vineyard, Cape Cod Community College)

Partnership schools will enhance their delivery of science courses
using technology and the theme of water resources. Creation of an
equipment co-op will allow schools to share sophisticated
water-testing and aquaculture equipment. The results of classroom
research and learning through field work, computer use and
teleconferencing will be shared with local and regional officials.

Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST)

$35,000
(Boston)

Teachers at Boston's Agassiz Elementary School will learn how to
develop and use accessible, web-based science lessons for 4th and 5th
grade students with disabilities and low-literacy skills. The
exemplary lessons created, along with guidelines for integrating the
web with science curriculum and for ensuring accessibility, will be
available on the web.

Freetown-Lakeville School District
$17,000
(Freetown, Lakeville, Freetown and Lakeville Councils on Aging,
Freetown and Lakeville Historical Societies)

This intergenerational project will allow students to research the
histories of Freetown and Lakeville, using local archives, interviews
with town residents and genealogical studies. Through the use of
research skills and strategies, and using a variety of technologies,
students will create family trees at senior citizen centers and "walls
of living history" at the schools.

Frontier Regional School District
$50,000
(Conway, Deerfield, Sunderland, Whately, Pocumtuck Valley Memorial
Association)

The Turns of the Centuries project will create a multi-grade
humanities curriculum which will enable students to study
Massachusetts history using primary resources including mass media and
artifacts from each of the last three turns of the centuries and our
own time. Special attention is given to three themes: Native
Americans, immigrants, and the land. Curriculum materials will be
made available to classrooms through a web site, allowing students and
teachers to have access to the museum's fragile documents and
artifacts which previously could be seen only by small numbers of
students on a field trip.

Northern Essex Community College
$50,000
(Amesbury, Haverhill, Pentucket Regional School District)

Teachers from three districts will design, develop, deliver and assess
interactive multimedia projects that integrate the standards of the
math and science curriculum frameworks. At a summer institute,
teachers will use software to enable presentation design, the
adaptation of web sites into curriculum and the incorporation of
sound, graphics and motion into multi-media projects. They will
redesign their lessons and publish the results on a project web site.

North Shore Consortium for Educational and Economic Development
$35,000
(Danvers, Salem, Beverly, Peabody, Lynn, Masconomet Regional, Revere,
Chelsea, Saugus, Wakefield, Melrose, North Shore Regional Vocational
Technical, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Rockport, Hamilton-Wenham, Essex,
Ipswich, Gloucester, Swampscott, Marblehead, North Reading)

Teachers from 20 school systems will attend training and redesign 16
courses in four curriculum areas. They will demonstrate and evaluate
the redesigned courses, and develop a curriculum resource center and
chat room. 150 teachers will be trained and will work with colleagues
to redesign curricula, try new institutional approaches and
collaboratively make needed improvements.

Old Sturbridge Village

$35,000
(Worcester, Springfield, Southbridge, Wachusett Regional, Hubbardston,
Sturbridge)

The On-Line Curriculum Project will use telecommunications and
information technology to link Old Sturbridge Village to urban and
rural schools to enhance their Social Sciences and English Language
Arts curricula. Activities will include development of multi-media
curriculum materials, teacher training opportunities and access to the
museum's resources for the study of everyday life in early
19th-century New England.

Quincy Public Schools
$32,000
(Quincy, Massachusetts Heavy Industries, Inc., Massachusetts Institute
of Technology)

Students in the 11th and 12th grades -- working in collaboration with
Massachusetts Heavy Industries (MHI) and MIT -- will use the
fundamentals of computer integrated manufacturing to augment the math,
science and technical curricula. This project continues the
relationship between the Quincy Public Schools and MHI, in
anticipation of the reopening of the Fore River Shipyard which will
create a demand for computer literate employees.

1998 Bell Atlantic EdLink Awards: Connecting Massachusetts Students to the Future

Classroom Project Summaries

Belmont High School
$10,000

Belmont High School students will work in research teams using
computers, the Internet, and lab equipment to do independent chemistry
investigations. They will create a web site to publish their work and
present a research seminar.

Bridgewater-Raynham Regional School District

$10,000

The City Lab Web Site Connections project will build on existing
efforts, which allow high school science students to connect with
scientists at Boston University Medical Center.

Bristol Tech Prep Consortium
$10,000

The consortium will sponsor an after-school technology program at two
middle schools using industrial robots. High school students will
serve as tutors and mentors.

Duggan Middle School, Springfield

$10,000

The Duggan Middle School will increase the use of technology in its
Adopt-a-School Social Studies curriculum with the Hamden County
District Attorney's Office and create an after-school technology
program.

Ipswich Public Schools
$10,000

The K-1 team at the Winthrop School will use computers, digital
cameras and video, and software to incorporate technology into its
community-focused curriculum. Teachers will produce community images
and information for use with current and future classes.

Lexington Public Schools
$10,000

Two teams of teachers will develop, field-test and disseminate
technology-infused curriculum units linked to the core curriculum --
an interdisciplinary unit on animal and scientific classification for
grades K-2 and an interdisciplinary unit on colonial Massachusetts for
grades 3-5.

Sutton Public Schools
$10,000

The project will pilot a virtual museum on the Internet which will
allow K-12 students to explore the history of their local community as
they learn US history.

Westwood Public Schools
$10,000

Second and fourth grade students at two Westwood elementary schools
will build a technology-connected learning community to study earth
science.

Whitman-Hanson Regional School District

$10,000

The Core Relevancy Project, for middle and high school students, will
incorporate educational and career planning into the core curriculum
via the use of interactive software and the creation of electronic
portfolios.