Site Overview

PTK is an innovative science education project incorporating leading-edge telecommunications technologies via World Wide Web sites, e-mail and listservs, live and taped videos, and print materials, created by research scientists and educators. The project is targeted to middle school teachers and their students (although it certainly reaches up, down and out from that target) and encourages flexible use by those with varying levels of technology and access, from video or print only, up to full Internet connectivity.

This evaluation and this site are being developed by the Center for Children and Technology at the Education Development Center under contract with Passport to Knowledge. The site's purpose is two fold:

1. To present information about our ongoing investigation of how PTK is being used by teachers and students and the educational benefits that derive from participating in the modules.
2. To supplement the many surveys, statistics, focus groups and e-mails that we collect for this investigation with a dynamic exchange with classroom teachers using the modules around student assessment as a way to help PTK and its teachers better understand and articulate the impact that this project has on student learning.

As part of the first objective, we invite you to view a special web version of our second-year report that has been divided into four sections; 1) Who is using PTK, 2) How are the materials being used, 3) PTK and professional development and 4) Student outcomes. We have also added a discussion area where you can ask questions or make comments on this work.

For our second objective, we encourage you to participate in discussions around assessment of student work that are taking place here. These discussions focus on matching science standards (national or local) to examples of student work that have been submitted and posted to the web site by teachers participating in PTK. To facilitate this conversation we have compiled a customized list of middle school science standards that relate to Passport's content focus. This list was compiled using the National Science Standards from the National Research Council, Benchmarks from the American Association for the Advancement of Science Project 2061 and two state level frameworks that are well-suited for viewing student work in terms of observable outcomes. These come from Illinois and West Virginia. Other states are also producing good frameworks so we anticipate that many of you will also want to include these into our growing list of resources. We are encouraging teachers participating in the PTK program to collaborate on-line with other teachers from around the country in linking these standards to the work that they are doing in their classrooms, and then be able to share their findings with their colleagues and with the larger educational community.