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By Joanne M. Haas
Wouldn’t it be nice to have one place to go to sort out information about the state’s new teacher licensing law, and to conveniently complete the law’s professional development requirements and opportunities?
That place will exist next year with the launch of a new Web site called Quality Educator Interactive. It will be housed within OnWEAC.
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Charlene Gearing |
Among other things, teachers accessing this online service will be able to securely and confidentially store license renewal projects, resumes and transcripts, using an electronic portfolio system that is being developed by WEAC, the University of Wisconsin System and UW Extension. Vital career documents will remain confidential, portable and accessible to member educators no matter where the teacher is employed.
“Teachers change districts,” said Charlene Gearing, WEAC’s director of teaching and learning, one of the key players involved in the system’s ongoing development. “This portfolio system is not linked to a district, or a university or a CESA. This is on WEAC’s Web site, so teachers will be able to get to their portfolio for their entire careers.”
Users will be able to store any and all records pertaining to their careers. A teacher may give permission for a prospective employer to view the electronic records, said WEAC’s teaching and learning consultant Ron Jetty. “The teacher controls the use,” he said.
One aim of this still-developing Internet home is to make the state’s new teacher licensing law – known as PI 34 – less cumbersome by providing easy-to-follow steps online.
“This will streamline the paperwork and will make it far less complicated,” Gearing said of the system that guides the user through the options.
The system also connects educators with people able to serve on professional development plan review teams. This online matchmaker will be especially helpful to teachers in need of peer teachers or higher education representatives when forming the three-member professional development plan review teams as required by PI 34 for renewal of the five-year Professional Educator License.
Veteran educators also will be able to offer their services to professional development plan review teams under any special scenarios -- such as limiting their services to a certain district or to a certain subject matter.
The interactive system also will help experienced educators deciding whether to renew under PI 34 or opt to renew their licenses the former way of earning six college credits. Informa-tion about college courses, either at a nearby campus or a virtual offering, will be accessible on the system.
The system also will serve the needs of the professional development providers by including their information in the interactive database where members can simply search or register to receive alerts about opportunities in specific topics or geographic areas.
Since the UW System and UW Extension are partners, users will see class notices and other special program information in the active database. That database also is expected to include information from numerous professional development providers including the state Department of Public Instruction, the various Cooperative Educational Service Agencies and groups such as the Wisconsin Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
“Every teacher in the state can eventually use it,” Gearing said of the seemingly boundless system that began as an idea more than two years ago. Gearing said the system would have been especially useful for her when she was a French teacher since she taught in a district where she was the only teacher in her field. That’s not the only reason she’s sold on it.
“I know I would use it because I would have all my stuff in one place,” she said.
Once up and running, user members will be asked to pay a minimal fee. Jetty and Gearing stress the fee will be determined by what is needed to keep the system sustained as a non-profit operation. “It is nice that the UW and WEAC have put in money to grow it. Now we have to sustain it,” Gearing said, adding the cost per person will be “bare bones – basically just to keep the system running.”
Posted November 19, 2004