The Emerging communications forces are making a deep, lasting transformation
of education both feasible and necessary. A consortium -- led by
the Center for Collaborative Education (CCE) and the Institute for
Learning Technologies (ILT) at Columbia University -- has joined
together to demonstrate how children contending with poverty, discrimination,
and urban crowding can achieve world-class education standards when
liberated by fundamental efforts at school reform, empowered by
the full use of advanced digital information. The goal is to develop
and implement a high profile, large scale technology learning challenge
-- the
Eiffel Project -- that will demonstrate that the small schools
reform movement, empowered with advanced media, can break the constraints
of the traditional school, thereby enabling all children to achieve
unprecedented levels of excellence. The consortium intends to improve
the educational experience of disadvantaged children dramatically
by connecting an increasing number of New York's urban K-12 schools
to the information superhighway, developing and implementing innovative
curricular strategies, and providing effective teacher professional
development, all in support of the small schools reform movement.
As currently envisioned, by the end of its fifth year, the project
will directly benefit over 30,000 students, most from African-American,
Latino, immigrant, and economically disadvantaged families in Harlem
and Upper Manhattan, the South Bronx, Queens, downtown Brooklyn,
as well as Newburgh, NY, and will serve as a national model for
new educational processes suited for use in all educational settings.
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