Providing more than two decades of service to Indiana educators, students and families, find out how we got started and developed the program over the years.
A small group of Indiana business and education leaders envisioned a world where children had access to educational opportunities beyond the school place and time through home-based computers.
Launched the pilot “Computer-in-the-Home” project, placing computers in 250 4th grade student homes in five school communities.
Buddy expanded to serve 12 schools and 1,000 families in grades 4 - 6 at sites across Indiana. Classroom teachers and support staff were all provided orientation, training and onsite support by a team of licensed educators.
The Indiana General Assembly established the Corporation for Educational Technology to administer the Buddy Project and support other Indiana K-12 educational technology endeavors.
Buddy added fifty additional schools, increasing membership in the project to well over 5,000 families. Onsite training and facilitation was implemented for all participating schools.
Buddy opened the Indiana Technology Learning Center, in partnership with the Indiana Department of Education and Butler University College of Education.
Buddy launched this website: www.buddyproject.org
Buddy expanded membership to over 9,000 families in 63 school communities, providing onsite facilitation and training for several hundred teachers and their students. Buddy also implemented a low-cost family software distribution program to support school and home use of computers.
The Buddy “Step Up” initiative used the talents of middle school students to train and support middle school teachers in the use and integration of technology at seventeen schools.
Buddy re-aligned services to best serve all Indiana educators, not just Buddy members, while engaging in research to support best practice in technology use to improve student achievement of newly adopted state academic standards.
Buddy implemented research projects integrating technology and best teaching practice to support writing instruction and assessment with approximately 1200 students among 8 Indiana schools.
Buddy launched www.thewritingsite.org, a website devoted to the teaching and assessment of writing skills. At its core is an interactive tutorial to practice scoring using ISTEP+ writing rubrics.
Buddy began working with the Indiana Department of Administration to re-purpose state surplus computers for educational use in Indiana schools in collaboration with Net Literacy, another Indianapolis area non-profit organization.
The Buddy Teaching and Learning Center (BLTC) moved to its current location in southwest Indianapolis, hosted by MSD Decatur Township.
Buddy first published Et Cetera, a monthly e-publication targeted to inform Indiana educators about technology use and integration for educational purpose. The Indiana Department of Education as well as Hoosier Educational Computer Coordinators (HECC), Indiana Computer Educators (ICE) and the PATINS Project collaborate in this endeavor.
Buddy facilitated study committees to identify and correlate student technology skills with other Indiana academic standards.
Buddy collaborates with the Center for Excellence in Leadership of Learning (CELL) to support New Tech school implementations across Indiana. Buddy is specifically engaged in supporting schools implementing the “New Tech” concept at elementary and middle school levels.
Visit our BTLC Partner Web Site!
The Buddy Teaching and Learning Center site, www.btlc.org, is the place to find and register for quality professional development and technology training opportunities offered by the team of Buddy facilitators who are all experienced Indiana teachers and administrators.
