Abstract

The State of Utah Resource Web (SURWEB) is a project mounted by a consortium of public and private agencies including Utah's educational service centers, institutions of higher learning, Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) regional educational laboratory, museums, state and national parks, and Native American tribal councils and agencies. The Southeastern Education Service Center in Price, Utah is the lead agency and fiscal sponsor of the grant.

The SURWEB project intends to address discrepancies in educational opportunities for Utah students who may be poor, rural, or from culturally disenfranchised communities. In addition, SURWEB has the potential to provide authentic, locally-created resources that will enhance educational opportunity for all of Utah's elementary and secondary students.

SURWEB intends to address barriers to quality educational opportunity by providing access to quality education resources via technology. The SURWEB scope of work consists of five primary tasks: 1) building connectivity to provide maximum access to information; 2) developing SURWEB curriculum applications for the Internet that are linked to world-class standards; 3) providing professional staff development for technology; 4) scaling up SURWEB access and applications to other regions in Utah; and 5) evaluation of SURWEB products and processes.

SURWEB evaluation will show the following outcomes: 1. Improvement in student academic achievement; 2. Improvement in student attitudes about learning; 3. Improvement in teacher attitudes; 4. Improvement in instructional practices and procedures.