News & Announcements

October 9, 1997

BAYSCAN IS FINALIST, BUT DOES NOT WIN
1997 TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION CHALLENGE GRANT

BaySCAN's Multimedia Learning Collaborative (BaySCAN MMLC) proposal to the U.S. Department of Education's Technology Challenge Innovation Grant program made the finals of the competition but was not one of the 19 consortiums awarded grants in the third year of this competition. The BaySCAN MMLC creates a multimedia school-to-career infrastructure by linking Bay Area high school multimedia academies with the Bay Area's multimedia industry, and with community college and college multimedia programs, for student internships, teacher externships, student projects, and collaborative efforts at curricular and program development.

Of 675 proposals submitted by May 30, 1997, 136 were selected out of the Tier I review in June, 36 were selected as finalists in the Tier II review in July. The finalists had to respond to an additional set of questions during the latter part of July. This year's grants were announced on September 19.

Since the competition began in 1995, 62 proposals have been funded out of more than 1700 submitted. Of these 62, more than 16 were resubmissions.

The next round of competition will be announced on November 1. Applications will be due February, 15, 1998, with awards announced by May 1, 1998.

BaySCAN plans to re-submit in the next round and will soon re-convene the working group as a subcommittee of the BaySCAN STC Whole School Change working group. We expect that the U. S. Department of Education (US DOE) will follow past practice and share reviewer's comments with finalist groups. Please communicate by email your interest in joining this new effort.

The US DOE has to date released little information on the winners, other than the names of the Local Education Agency (LEA) and a brief description which does not include the consortium members. There is no information as yet on the Challenge Grant web site at http://www.ed.gov/Technology/challenge/.

Of the 19 winners four were from California: Fresno County, Sanger Unified SD (located in Fresno), Lemon Grove SD (San Diego County), and Los Angeles USD. The LA award goes to the Workforce LA proposal to partner LA USD and the entertainment and multimedia industries to prepare "inner-city youth for the technological challenges of the future". The LA group has been a partner with the Bay Area Multimedia Project (BAMP), one of the BaySCAN MMLC lead groups, in the development of SkillsNet.

For information, contact:

Sharon Oldham

BaySCAN

c/o Autodesk Foundation

111 McInnis Parkway

San Rafael, CA 94903

(415)507-6841      Fax (415)507-6339

Email [email protected]