This page and its resources were created as part of the Common Knowledge: Pittsburgh Fall Institute. Administrators in the Pittsburgh Public Schools are using the Internet in a variety of ways.

PPS administrators are restructuring schedules, budgets and staffing to support Internet activities in their schools. Here are a number of examples of how this is done.

• Scheduling - The Westinghouse SAM program is attempting to provide every 9th and 10th grade SAM student with a background in using the Internet for research. To accomplish this, Westinghouse teachers worked with the principal to schedule all SAM students into a Problem Solving/Research class for this purpose. In addition, the science faculty is paired up and the classes are team taught. The schedule was also modified to pair up junior and senior SAM students to allow for collaboration as they use technology to conduct their scientific research.

• Online Daily Bulletin - At Spring Hill the daily bulletin goes out online. This has been happening for the last two years. Initially, it was a one-way communication tool, Virginia DiPucci sent mail to everyone on staff. As the year went on and the staff became more and more comfortable with the medium, the daily bulletin became an opportunity for a two-way discussion. Teachers began responding to the topics in the bulletin. The discussion that followed was both between principal and staff and staff and staff. Spring Hill is in its second year with this activity.

• School Level Support - Ernestein Reed has given her user-admin additional periods to handle the first level of support for the Internet activity at Frick. The user-admin rather than having hall-duty or class-coverage is able to use the 2/3 extra periods a week for supporting teachers and students involved with the Internet. This support is in creating new teacher or student accounts, getting the Acceptable Use Policy out to students, migrating accounts, and helping to coordinate the Frick homepage.

• Title One Funds - Spring Hill and Reizenstein are both using Title One funds to help support the technical activity at the school. In both examples the Title One funds are providing a person who keeps the machines operational.

• The Pennsylvania Department of Education
  
• Search Engines
  
• A Teachers Guide to the Department of Education
  
• Directory of 800-phone numbers
  
• Look Up Zip-Codes
  
• WWW Tutorial for K12 Classrooms
  
• The Workforce Skills Homepage
  
• AskEric
  
• Regional Labs
  
• NSF - Education and Human Resources
  
• FAQ About K12 Internetworking
  
• US K12 School District WWW Pages
  
• THOMAS: US Congress Information
  
• ASCD - Assoc. for Supervision & Curriculum Development
  
• ERIC - Educational Resources Information Center
  
• Education Subject List - Yahoo
  
• Statistical Abstract of the United States
  
• Child Safety on the Information Highway
  
• Acceptable Use Policies - Frequently Asked Questions
  
• GrantsWeb WWW HomePage
  

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