This past spring, 18 Sonoma Valley Unified School District Teachers (SVUSD) finished the 2008-2009 MERIT program (formerly Earn While You Learn). The program provides Sonoma Valley public school teachers with essential training that gives them the ability to integrate technology into the classroom. This enables teachers to making learning more interesting and dynamic for students who are adept with technology. It also encourages teachers and students to use the Internet as a tool for research and knowledge sharing.
MERIT, which stands for Making Education Relevant and Interactive Through Technology, is currently in its fifth and final year. In the past four years, the Sonoma Valley Education Foundation has provided MERIT training for 78 SVUSD teachers.
In its mission to train 100 teachers – approximately one third of the teachers in the SVUSD – MERIT will succeed, once the current and final class of 21 teachers completes the program this year.
The MERIT program is administrated and sponsored by the Sonoma Valley Education Foundation as one of its three core programs. It is made possible by the generosity of several community foundations and private donations and therefore, not affected by the current budget crisis.
The graduates from MERIT also go on to serve as peer support for the faculty at their schools, driving the use of technology. As an example Fran Meininger, executive director at the Education Foundation said that most of the teachers on Flowery Elementary School’s Site Technology Committee are MERIT graduates.
“My comfort level with technology has improved tremendously and I found that students’ behavior and work engagement improves significantly when using technology,” said Peggy Burris, a teacher at Sonoma Valley High School. “This is the first time in 30 years of teaching that hairs have stood up on the back of my neck.”
Meininger described MERIT like this, “The program is structured in several parts over an entire year beginning with a two week intensive classroom session where teachers learn hardware and software applications and develop the concept for their graduation project; the second part includes several Saturday mini-sessions to fine tune skills and focus on more advanced applications; the program concludes with a graduation project that the teachers complete with their regular class during the school year. The projects are presented at graduation and all participants are required to submit their project to California Student Multimedia Festival.”
Meininger went on to point out that four MERIT teachers won first place at the festival this spring.
The festival exists to celebrate the amazing media and multimedia projects produced by California’s best and brightest students and teachers – rewarding and acknowledging their successful classroom work. It showcases what can be accomplished when talented students and dedicated teachers work together integrating media and multimedia into education.
The following is a list of the MERIT teachers and their winning media projects:
Emily Grzyb – “Good Gold,” an interactive social studies project about the true story of the California Gold Rush
Melissa Keylon – “Somos autores!/We Are Authors!” in which students created books in Spanish
Tracy Dorrance – “Teen Parents Connect” a student designed website for teen mothers enrolled in Cal-Safe programs.
Alita Matthews – “Amazing Animal Addition,” kindergarten-student-created math story problems were incorporated into multiple iPhoto books that focused on different math concepts.
More information about MERIT is available at the Ed. Foundation Web site at www.sveducationfoundation.org. Those interested in supporting this kind of innovation for students and teachers should contact Fran Meininger at 707.935.9566.
