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Through a Reinventing Education grant made in 2002, IBM is working with the Baltimore Collaboration, made up of the Baltimore City Public School System (BCPSS), the College of Notre Dame of Baltimore, Morgan State University, and the Baltimore Teachers Union, to strengthen and expand each institution's teacher professional development efforts. The specific goals of the partnership are multifold: to increase the percentage of teachers graduating from the participating colleges of education who are hired by BCPSS; to increase the content knowledge, technology integration, and retention rates for new teachers; and to improve teacher effectiveness by providing access to the resources and tools that foster needs-based student instruction.
To reach these goals, the partnership is developing a Teacher Support System, a toolkit for pre- and in-service teachers to build, access, and share standards-based best practice teaching and learning materials. Teachers will be able to access these materials throughout their careers to support high quality teaching. The system uses Riverdeep Learning Village at its core. The higher education institutions are using the technology to improve pre-service and classroom teachers' abilities to create and implement effective, standards-based lesson plans and instructional strategies. They also are using the tool to enable faculty at the colleges of education to serve as online mentors for pre- and in-service teachers, offering ongoing guidance and support.
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