ATLANTA — An educational technology leader who has helped many of the Southern Regional Education Board states set the pace nationally in using technology to improve education will join several luminaries in receiving a prestigious national award in January.
William R. "Bill" Thomas, the longtime director of the Southern Regional Education Board’s Educational Technology Cooperative, will receive the prestigious National Coalition for Technology in Education and Training’s Community Builder Award at the Bytes & Books Inaugural Ball on January 20, 2009, at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.
"We are rapidly expanding the uses of technology to meet academic and educational needs that can’t be met very well in any other ways," Thomas said. "This is all about kids and learning."
Thomas will join filmmaker George Lucas, U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and former National Education Association official Barbara Stein in receiving the honor following the presidential inauguration.
Previous winners of the award include U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia, U.S. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, former Governor Angus King and U.S. Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, and Linda G. Roberts, the founding director of the U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Technology.
Under Thomas’ leadership, the SREB Educational Technology Cooperative has established itself as a leading authority in the field by bringing together K-12 and higher education state education agencies from across the 16 SREB states to share strategies for using technology to improve education.
The SREB region now leads the nation in providing online courses and in the number of middle grades and high school students successfully completing online courses. Enrollment in state virtual schools in SREB states has increased sevenfold since 2005 and continues to grow quickly.
More than 200,000 middle grades and high school students now complete online courses in SREB states each year. The Cooperative also worked with states to develop the nation’s first standards for K-12 online teaching and courses in 2007, which became the basis for new international standards.
State virtual schools enable middle grades, high school and college students to access high-quality courses regardless of where they live, Thomas said. "They provide equity in access. They help improve academic performance," he said. "This is the way students learn today. What we do here (at the SREB Cooperative) is look at these issues of how to use these technologies effectively. We look at everything from a K-20 point of view."
Comprised of 37 K-12 and higher education state education agencies, the Cooperative recently launched a first-of-its-kind Web site for K-12 online teachers, www.srebonlineteachers.org. The site, funded with a grant from the AT&T Foundation, is an expanding place for teachers of online courses to connect with each other, share best practices and more. The Cooperative also has begun the SREB-SCORE initiative to provide high-quality, peer-reviewed digital learning content — including classroom lessons on a variety of topics for K-12 and higher education — that teachers can use.
Thomas has written and directed many important papers on educational technology. He regularly speaks with governors, legislators and other state leaders on educational technology issues. He has served on numerous state, regional and national committees and panels on various educational technology topics.
He advised state leaders and policy-makers: "Don’t assume that public education has to be provided the way it was in 1950," he said. "K-12 and postsecondary education are changing, and the biggest stumbling blocks are the policies" to support them.
"There are a number of serious policy issues that need to be addressed," he said. Public colleges and universities need to review their policies requiring students to pay out-of-state tuition, since online and hybrid courses increasingly are needed to meet the demands of college enrollment growth, he said. States also need to revise teacher licensing and credentialing to allow online teachers to make more high-quality online courses available to students across state borders, he said.
Another part of education that is changing because of the Web is professional development for teachers, Thomas said. States can save money and tap more resources by offering training workshops via the Internet, rather than asking educators to travel to short training sessions, he said.
Thomas joined SREB in 1996 after serving as the coordinator of technology services in the Fairfax County, Virginia, public schools, one of the nation’s largest school districts. He previously served as a classroom teacher, school administrator and technology coordinator. He also worked in the Falls Church, Virginia, and Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, public schools, and taught undergraduate and graduate courses at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
The National Coalition for Technology in Education and Training (NCTET) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization of education stakeholders committed to the use of technology to improve teaching and learning. NCTET’s board and participants represent education associations, nonprofit organizations, corporations and others. Since 1993, NCTET has organized Washington policy briefings, issue forms and has published papers on educational technology.
For more information about how your state is tapping new technologies to improve educational opportunities or to speak with Bill Thomas for a story on educational technology, contact SREB Communications.
The Southern Regional Education Board, or SREB, based in Atlanta, was created in 1948 by Southern governors and legislatures to help leaders in education and government work cooperatively to advance education and improve the social and economic life of the region. SREB has 16 member states: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. More information is available online at www.sreb.org.
