By Bruce Barton
 BRUCE BARTON/Town Crier Darlene Feldstein, left, of Los Altos, a teacher at Gunn High School, receives a certificate of completion from Gay Krause, executive director of the Krause Center for Innovation, during a May 15 graduation ceremony for teachers participating in the center’s Earn While You Learn Institute. |
Another 50 teachers and 17 fellows received certificates and $1,000 checks May 15 for completing the Earn While You Learn Institute offered at the Krause Center for Innovation on the Foothill College campus.
The latest group brings the total number to 283 teacher graduates since the program began in the 2001-2002 school year. The yearlong Earn While You Learn program acquaints teachers with new technologies while encouraging them and their students to work together on multimedia projects.
An accompanying fellows program allows graduates to collaborate with students on multiclassroom, Internet-based, “real-world” projects. The intent is to get teachers and students better acclimated to today’s rapidly evolving high-tech environment and to enhance students’ overall learning.
Linda Ullah, teacher in residence at the Krause center, said the program offers teachers skills and support so they can, in turn, can provide “tech leadership.”
Most of the teachers taking the program come from Santa Clara County, including several from the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District and the Los Altos School District. However, Ullah said, the center’s programs are available to “any teacher, anywhere. We’ve had some from out of state and from other countries.”
Rosemary Garcia, an eighth-grade English teacher at Egan Junior High School, said the program “gave me the skills to go back into the classroom” and enhance teaching with high-tech tools. “I didn’t have to be an expert at it,” she said.
Garcia was with fellow Egan teacher Katie Beman displaying an Apple Computer iMovie program used for the presentation, “Thunder Rolling in the Mountains” addresses the federal government’s dispersal of Native Americans into the Northwest during the 1870s.
The center’s efforts are receiving statewide attention. “Eighteen of our projects have just won California Student Media and Multimedia Festival awards,” said Ullah. “This means that statewide, our projects are really high level.”
Projects involved such technology as digital video and iPod casting.
Other training and coaching programs at the Center for Innovation include LINC-FastTech Classes, which allow educators and residents to take short classes to develop tech skills. This training for K-14 educators demonstrates how technology can be incorporated into classroom curriculum.
Headed by Executive Director Gay Krause, the Krause Center for Innovation opened in 2002 to address a decline in U.S.-bred scientists, engineers and mathematicians. The work at the center is intended to prepare students for the new economy by providing a strong resource for K-14 educators. The bulk of its funding is from private contributors.
For more information, visit www.foothill.edu/kci/.
