Organization
Name
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MCI WorldCom Foundation
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Contact Name
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Nancy Bauer
703-415-6511
Fax 703-415-7175
nancy.bauer@wcom.com
Caleb Schutz
Director
1200 S. Hayes St.
Arlington, VA 22202
www.wcom.com
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Program/Project
Description
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MarcoPolo Program (www.wcom.com/marcopolo): MarcoPolo is a partnership between the MCI WorldCom Foundation and leading educational organizations that have created standards-based Internet Content for the Classroom through five discipline-specific educational Web sites. Our objective is to provide the highest quality content and professional development free of charge and easily accessible to all educators in the country.
MarcoPolo Partners ensure that their Web site content is accurate, up-to-date, and unbiased, offering teachers a "seal of approval." Sites link to some of the Internet's best educational sites to provide the rich and exciting learning opportunities developed by other excellent organizations. However, to ensure quality and safety, sites are thoroughly reviewed and approved by panels of education and content experts whose credentials are available at each site.
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Key Highlights/
Milestones
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- Tens of thousands of teachers use these online resources at no cost each month to meet their rigorous academic standards within a creative and exciting learning environment.
- The MarcoPolo Professional Development Program has entered into agreements to provide Internet content training through major school districts across the country, including New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Miami, Baltimore, and Dallas. The program has trained over 45,000 teachers to date, and we expect more than 100,000 teachers to have received this training by June 2000.
- The University of Maryland at College Park has partnered with the MCI WorldCom Foundation to create a MarcoPolo-based online course to instruct pre-service teachers on how to incorporate the Internet into the classroom. This partnership will serve as the model for future university partnerships, which will be supported by Foundation grants beginning in Fall 1999.
- The MarcoPolo partnership presented the first Summit on Internet Content for the Classroom on June 8, 1999 at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C., attended by over 400 leaders in education from 29 states.
- MarcoPolo Partner sites have received numerous awards, including the Software Industry Association's Codie Award, the Smithsonian Computerworld Technology Award, and the EdPress Distinguished Achievement Awards.
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Results Forecast
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All MarcoPolo Partner sites are scheduled for major, ongoing site improvements and additions. Partner-led outreach programs will notify educators of these advancements and encourage ongoing classroom use. We expect the current usage (100,000+ user sessions monthly) to continue to increase as the word continues to spread through partner networks, the 2,500+ sites that now link to MarcoPolo partner sites, and the education media.
With three new Foundation grant programs being offered in Fall 1999, the MarcoPolo program and its messages about the need for high quality, standards-based content and scaleable design should impact tens of thousands of teachers and students over the next 12 months.
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