Application+Info

= Application Information =

Applications Due: May 18th
**Apply Now using Google Forms**



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**To Apply:** The Institute for Research and Innovative Education at the LPVEC seeks to offer this exceptional professional development opportunity to a variety of Massachusetts school districts. From the pool of districts that express interest, 30 school district teams will be selected to participate. These teams will represent the diversity of school districts in Massachusetts, including districts from all regions of the state, and rural, suburban, and urban communities. **If your district is interested in sending a team, please contact Zach Smith at the Lower Pioneer Valley Educational Collaborative (zsmith@lpvec.org, 413-735-6393) or apply online no later than May 18 to apply.** Please indicate the name of your district, how many people (3-5 members) you would like to have attend and, if already known, their names and positions. Districts that express interest may be asked for additional information and will be notified by June 1 if they have been selected to participate.
 * Who Should Attend: ** Teachers in grades K-12, from all academic areas (science, mathematics, history/social studies, English language arts, etc.), as well as educational administrators. Participants must register as a team of 3-5 members from a school district or school. Each participant must bring his/her own wireless laptop to the Institute and have a technology proficiency level of "Developing Tech" on the Technology Self-Assessment Tool (TSAT). This tool is available at http://www.doe.mass.edu/edtech/standards/sa_tool.html. Teams from a variety of technology contexts (e.g., 1 to 1 laptop classrooms, computer labs, as well as single computer classrooms) are invited to participate. Enrollment is limited to 125 Massachusetts educators to ensure that individual needs are met. ======

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**Cost:** This professional development opportunity is provided at the low cost of $525 per participant, which **includes food** (continental breakfast and lunch). Participants who need hotel accommodations in Cambridge will be responsible for making their own arrangements and paying for the cost of these rooms. To assist with this, the Institute has made special arrangements with hotels near the Microsoft Center for participants desiring overnight accommodations, including the beautiful Kendall Hotel. ======

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**PDPs/Graduate Credit:** Each participant will receive 67.5 PDPs. Graduate credit will be available through a MA State University (cost TBD) for those participants who request it. Both the PDPs and graduate credits will not be awarded until participants successfully complete the weeklong Institute and the three follow-up sessions. ======

** Location: **// Microsoft New England Research and Development Center, 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA // The Microsoft New England Research & Development Center (NERD) is a research and software innovation campus located in the heart of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The NERD vertical campus spans two buildings with its primary presence and conference center located at One Memorial Drive and a recently renovated and expanded space located at One Cambridge Center. NERD is home to some of Microsoft’s most strategic teams including Microsoft Research New England, Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V), SharePoint Workspace, Microsoft Technical Computing, Microsoft Advertising, Microsoft Lync, Microsoft Office 365 and more. NERD has become a hub of activity for the local tech community and has hosted more than 500 events and welcomed more than 40,000 visitors during the past two years.

** Provider: ** The Lower Pioneer Valley Educational Collaborative (LPVEC) will lead a team of national speakers who are key leaders from universities and organizations, as well as a team of Massachusetts content educators, and a team of teacher leaders to provide the one-week institute.

**Keynote Speakers** in the past have included Dr. Donald Leu, leader of the 2010 Massachusetts New Literacies Institute and the head of the New Literacies Research Lab at the University of Connecticut, and Thomas Daccord, co-Director of EdTech Teacher and educational technology professional development provider, among other nationally recognized educators in the field of new literacies integration into curriculum. This year, we will have the same keynotes or similar, high-caliber speakers to kick off the Institute and set the stage for the week of learning.

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Instructional technology will be given away to teachers to incorporate the new literacies into their classrooms and districts. This equipment will help to shape the classrooms for 21century learning, for example, tablets, video cameras, laptops, or Internet devices. ======

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The focus of this year’s Institute will emphasize the shift to literacy skills in all subject areas based on the new literacies of online collaborative inquiry, online content construction, and online reading comprehension. How will Massachusetts public school teachers transform their curricular delivery to adjust to these shifts in literacy skills as we address 21st century learning and the new Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks? ======