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nowBuzz up! Virginia is in line for an additional $324 million in federal economic-stimulus funds, according to the state's U.S. senators.

"At a time when state and local government budgets are tight, these stimulus dollars have helped Virginia avoid even deeper cuts to public education."

Traditional textbooks have served us well, especially for me as a beginning teacher, because the textbook was the curriculum. The concept of looking at different ways to deliver textbooks could be as simple as putting it online or making it able to be viewed on an iPad or similar device. It could be more complex by including lots of multimedia and other interactive resources. But fundamentally, even experienced teachers are looking to textbooks for guidance on what to teach, what the content should be, and what the process should be. In developing electronic textbooks, you have to hold onto those concepts. The textbook is a teacher’s guideline and roadmap. Any of the multimedia and enhanced materials that you can include to enliven instruction would attest to that.

We can energize students with technology, and there’s a lot of gold to be panned in exploring many new teaching methods

OER would allow many opportunities and latitude to have really good and engaging instruction. The sharing of resources and best practices would help teachers do other things to enhance the learning of not only mainstream kids, but gifted students too. Struggling students can use these resources to review content in other formats or at different paces.

While our members come from many different areas of the educational spectrum, they share a belief that technology has the power to transform teaching and learning.