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The Read/Write Web Project is designed to extend learning across two middle school communities in Great Falls, Montana. Using '21st Century' learning strategies and technologies, it will provide ICT learning opportunities for students in the classroom, and also professional development for staff.

Our current students belong to the 'digital generation' - a generation who uses the Internet, mobile devices and many other digital tools to learn and communicate in ways that were not possible previously. For these students, technology is becoming a ubiquitous part of their lives, and of course will be a key feature in their future careers.

As educators, a major component of our job is to discover how to best reach our students in ways that will ensure learning has taken place. Today's society has changed the face of that learning, and it is argued that traditional views on education are no longer relative to our world. Is it true that connectivism is a "theory of learning that can bridge the rift between traditional and new educational approaches to prepare learners for the tomorrow they will inherit" (George Siemens, qtd. in Bayne, 2008).

The Read/Write Web Project seeks to harness these technologies and learning strategies to provide learning opportunities which engage and motivate. Initially it will focus on students from the Extended Curricular Services (Gifted and Talented) Program, impacting approx 90-100 students per quarter. We have identified two key technologies to focus on:

• Moodle - An open source learning management system will be used in our project to develop two units of study - the first focused on career education (fall session) and a unit on Engineering (spring session).
• Quest Atlantis - a virtual worlds learning environment which has been developed by the University of Indiana and provides a safe and engaging 3D environment where students can engage in collaborative online learning with other middle school students from around the world.

A basic outline of the planned curriculum is available at: http://mrasecs1.wikispaces.com/ and is designed to support students to apply their knowledge of online tools and resources in a real-life context. New skills will be promoted and mastered, including:

• Digital Literacy Skills: read, research, evaluate and understand information online
• Digital Communication Skills: communicating safely and effectively online
• Collaboration Skills: create, learn and share with other students, teachers and learners
• Publishing Skills:  Creating, mixing and publishing content in online environments.

The secondary aim of our project is to support staff at both our schools to engage in their own professional learning. A number of workshops will be offered and will explore:

• Internet Safety - teaching students to use read/write technologies safely
• The power of read/write technologies to create authentic learning that meets the needs of all learning styles and multiple intelligences
• Developing professional personal learning networks (PLNs) for lifelong learning
• Developing and managing collaborative learning environments

The Read/Write Web Project will allow us to develop engaging learning opportunities for students that are relevent to their 'life-worlds' to extend their 21st century skills; as well as supporting and enabling our staff to meet 21st century learning needs.

Funding for this project will be used to purchase a10 netbook PCs for use by students and staff in a new portable computer lab to be established for use across two school campuses.

The proposed system is based on current Dell Montana Educational pricing at $499.99 per unit. This includes Latitude 2100 workstations with Intel Atom processors, 10.1 LCD screen, keyboard and mouse (price is a 3 year next business day warranty).  A brief description of the specifications of the workstations that will be purchased are included in the spreadsheet on page five of this proposal.  More detailed specifications are available upon request.

In the initial phase, we expect that the new computer lab will allow us to engage a minimum of 100 students and ten staff members at the two middle schools in Great Falls, Montana, in the use of a range of learning technologies.  Additionally, we seek to extend the project to reach staff and students from across the district as one of our key project objectives.

The lab that is created via this grant proposal will enable both students and teachers to explore how the digital age impacts their learning and their futures. It will allow them to gain the key skills they need to be successful in today's and tomorrow's classrooms and tomorrow's workplaces.

Additionally, this funding will allow us to equip our two middle schools with a customized, flexible learning environment (Stager, 2005), (Smith, 2003), which is a key factor in our ability to embed technologies for learning  and digital literacy strategies into our schools.  Having the right tools to do the right job is crucial to motivating and giving the application of ICT for teaching and learning real credibility.

It is crucial that both learners and facilitators gain the ability to effectively utilize and evaluate Information Communication Technology. The Essential Questions for the 21st Century Learner are:

• How do you know information is true?
• How do you communicate effectively?
• What does it mean to be a global citizen
• How do I learn best?
• How can we be safe?

This project will enable us to engage students in a soft, managed immersion of the read/write web which allows them to develop these skills safely and effectively through the use of technology as an embedded part of daily curriculum - including using tools like Moodle and Quest Atlantis to engage in connected and collaborative learning opportunities.

The project also offers staff, who are often wary of introducing new technologies into their classroom a positive, supported opt in opportunity to implement technology in their teaching practice in effective and sustainable ways. We believe that this will have lasting effects across all learners and all teachers in our school, allowing us to adapt and extend successful teaching strategies and resources and develop new and innovative approaches to teaching and learning for the future.

Sustainability of the Project

Technical sustainability requires reliable technology and access.

• Quest Atlantis is built on Active Worlds, which a long history of success and academic evaluation. It is supported by the University of Indiana and includes a free professional development program for teachers
• Moodle is widely considered enterprise level learning management, and in use in K12 and Higher Education worldwide, including large organisations such as MIT. It is currently supported by our school district.
• Computer hardware to be purchased meets our school district's policies in terms of support and implementation.
• Support to be provided by Central IT, who can provide remote technical support at the application level.

Pedagogical Sustainability is achieved as courses can be delivered to anybody with a connection to the Internet regardless of the student’s distance from the school, or location in the school.

• Students can be members of a class and communicate with the teacher and each other on their learning activities the same room, or anywhere with internet access - and beyond the school day.
• Students may work at slightly different rates during the duration of the courses they are kept to a timeline for completion of their activities by the schedule imposed by the course structure. This makes learning sustainable; as they can revisit lessons and activities outside of the lesson.
• Both technologies offer gradebooks, goal orientated tasks, quizzes and testing methods - to assist teachers with evaluation of learning - but the teacher; and the wider district to assess the project.
• As students better engage with teachers; discuss projects; their comments and activities shape and strengthen future iterations. By using technology that is flexible, not rigid - the course can be improved and modified over time.

Using Learning Management Systems (Quest Atlantis & Moodle); I can provide students with quality resources that they can access multiple times; with content that meets standards. I can equally supplement that with additional resources each year, to assist slower learners, or challenge more advanced ones. The technology allows for greater personalized and differentiation than traditional text books or fixed computer software. Supervisors can 'drop in' to check progress more often; newcomer teachers can observe technique; and grade books and texts can be stored electronically.

The Moodle courses I create will allow students to learn about, share, and present projects and materials via the use of a variety of multi-media tools.  Students will have greater access to the exponentially increasing number of high quality multi-media applications presented by the web.  At the end of each course the students’ web-created content will provide them with a high quality record of the learning that has occurred for them.