Marisa Burkhart Wins State School Technology Award

A press release from the Huntley School District:

Marisa Burkhart Wins Illinois Computing Educators “2014 Educator of the Year Award”

ALGONQUIN – Consolidated School District 158 has received word that Marisa Burkhart, Director of Educational Technology has been selected as the winner of the 2014 Educator of the Year Award from Illinois Computing Educators (ICE).

District 158, a unit district of over 9000 students, is midway through implementing 1:1 learning with all students K-12.

D158 screen shot of courseMs. Burkhart’s primary role has been to manage day to day operations of the implementation as well as design and implement the professional development program for teachers.

Ms. Burkhart will be presented with her award at the opening General Session of the Illinois Computing Educators (ICE) State Conference later this month.

Each year, ICE selects one educator in each of two categories – one teacher and one technology administrator, for this prestigious award. Educators are nominated for this award by colleagues, fellow teachers, students, and school administrators who feel that the nominee has made outstanding contributions to the integration of technology and the improvement of teaching and learning in their school or district. Once nominated, candidates must complete an extensive application process that is reviewed, evaluated, and scored by members of the ICE Educator of the Year Committee. Selections are then confirmed by the ICE Executive Board for final approval.

Ms. Burkhart has been extremely instrumental in bringing online learning to Huntley High School (HHS). One of her first projects was to explore online learning and what, if any, impact it would have on HHS.

As a result of her exploration and research, she wrote, presented, and gained approval of a new program in accordance with the Remote Education Act to begin acting as an online provider of education for HHS. In the first year of the program, approximately 100 students participated in a blended course at the high school with both face-to-face and online components.

Today, this program has grown to over 1,000 blended online course enrollments by students. Unique to this program is the fact that online content is created and delivered by District 158 teachers.

Curriculum development has changed with the introduction of digital resources. Ms. Burkhart states, “Focusing on digital resources allows us to continuously review curriculum and be nimble enough to make small tweaks or big changes, when previously, we’d need to wait 7+ years until the textbooks needed to be replaced.”


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