FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: VALERIE DAVIS

JULY 6, 1998
512•476•4ENV

KTB wins $1 million TEA Grant
Cutting Edge Environmental Curricula to Go online in '99

AUSTIN -- With the help of a technology grant of nearly $1 million from the Texas Education Agency, Keep Texas Beautiful is leading a statewide team that will bring the nation's first interactive litter prevention curriculum to the Internet.

"This partnership between the TEA, local school districts, and Keep Texas Beautiful will put online environmental curricula in more Texas classrooms than ever before," said Elizabeth Howie, executive director of Keep Texas Beautiful. "Not only will this program give children the tools they need to become technologically literate, but it will teach them new and innovative ways to protect and enhance our environment."

The grants, which are funded through the state's Technology Integration in Education (TIE) program, are designed to help advance national goals for technology in education. The goal of the TIE initiative is to encourage partnerships that focus on fully integrating technology into teaching and learning to ensure that all students are technologically literate by the 21st century.

KTB joined forces with Calallen, Fabens, Harlingen, Lufkin, Yantis and Ysleta independent school districts, as well as numerous local groups and state agencies to launch this pilot program in 1999. Bricolage Design, Incorporated of Austin, an Internet service provider that specializes in interactive, online curriculum development, will develop the program and manage the Web site.

This innovative initiative will allow students from the six independent school districts to work through three complex environmental education problems addressing litter, graffiti, and waste management. Working online, they will brainstorm together, pose questions to industry experts, debate alternative strategies, and share solutions.

Students and teachers will discuss project work from campuses across the state via Internet discussion forums and e-mail exchanges. The Texas Center for Educational Technology at the University of North Texas in Denton will design and conduct evaluation and feedback plans for the project.

Unit projects for the pilot program will include: Creating a Litter Collection database, where students will design a digital map of their school campus on the Web, locating, collecting, and recording spots and times where litter occurs; Graffiti Control Policy Evaluation, where participants will research where and why graffiti occurs in their communities; and Exploring the Challenges of Siting a Landfill, which will teach students how to build a scale model to study soil types, underground water flow, and waste composition. Data from the six school districts will be compiled and shared with state agencies.

Keep Texas Beautiful is an educational, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating litter and creating a cleaner and more beautiful environment. Over the last eight years, KTB has trained approximately 16,000 Texas educators on the use of Keep America Beautiful's award-winning "Waste In Place" curricula that encourages the responsible and effective use of natural resources. Through this training, KTB has reached approximately 190,000 students in Texas.