Our vision is to assist in establishing a new technology proficient teaching force. The collaborative effort between the communities and school districts of Everett, Malden and Medford, Tufts University, Salem State College and TRI-TEC is designed to support teachers in their search of exploring effective applications of technology to enhance teaching and learning.The Teacher Learning Center hopes to act as a resource to Everett teachers and administrators as they embark on integrating 21st century tools into their curriculum.

The LEARN/21C grant was made possible by a U.S. Department of Education Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to Use Technology (PT3) grant program that addresses a growing challenge in modern education: nearly all elementary and secondary schools are now "wired" to the Internet, but most teachers still feel uncomfortable using technology in their teaching.

Since 1999, PT3 has awarded over 400 grants to education consortia to help address this challenge. These grants include projects designed to transform teaching and learning through faculty development, course restructuring, certification policy changes, online teacher preparation, Enriched-Networked-Virtual, video case studies, electronic portfolios, mentoring triads, and embedded assessments.

As a partnership among the tri-city communities of Everett, Malden, and Medford, its schools, and Salem State College, Project LEARN's mission is to establish a technology-proficient teaching force by learning more about the effective integration of technology into the school district curricula and into university teacher preparation programs. This collaboration effort is designed to support teacher's inquiries into the classroom applications of technology that will enhance teaching and learning for the 21st century.

The project focuses on designing teams of teachers comprised of district mentors and Salem State faculty who will become proficient in integrating the Internet and World-Wide-Web effectively into the curriculum. Through the development of project-based units that are electronically created and stored on a web-enhanced relational database, Teacher Learning Centers and teacher teams in the three participating cities will be able to share a wealth of information concerning curriculum/technology integration, K-12.

Project iTEACH, a grant funded by the Massachusetts Department of Education, focuses on creating detailed electronic implementation guides for the existing LEARN/21C project-based units. The grant also provides for development of a web-based tool for sharing implementation data and training for district administrators and teachers on curriculum/technology integration. In addition, during the 2003-04 school year Project iTEACH participants were trained by WGBH in the production of training videos.