Accepted Papers from TCEA Symposium 2008

How Public Television Stations and State
Departments of Education Collaborate to
Provide Online Professional Development
Opportunities for K-12 Educators

Lynne Meeks, EdD
Alabama Public Television

Richard Littleton, EdD
Alabama Public Television

Nancy Hill, MA
Alabama Public Television

ABSTRACT: To meet increasing demands for highly qualified public school educators, eight state public television stations and their respective state departments of education have joined together to provide educators high quality online professional development opportunities. The five year initiative is funded by a Ready to Teach grant from the US Department of Education (USDOE) and is administered by Alabama Public Television (APT). In the first eighteen months, more than 12,000 educators have been served by the e-Learning for Educators collaboration and a growing state system of Online Professional Development (OPD) has been established. The initiative has three overarching goals: to provide quality online professional development to educators in each of the participating states, to create a sustainable collaborative model in each state to serve the future online professional development needs of educators, and to provide rigorous, groundbreaking research into the effects of online professional development on teacher practice and student learning. To achieve these ambitious goals, e-Learning for Educators has developed a multi-state, cross-agency collaboration that defines common standards, shares resources and expertise, and supports the individual state programs. This report seeks to present the implementation, development, and impact of this collaborative model across the project. Implications exist for state and national educational policy, public broadcasting stations, state departments of education and future collaborative efforts across agencies.