Know your agency's priorities and limits.

   Experiences:

The ten agencies that created online learning modules with teachers in 1999-2000 defined the goals and objectives of their projects within the overall mission of the agency. Three of the projects extended the activities of pre-existing educational programs, and five of them developed an educational component to correspond with agency resources. One agency collected new resources to develop a learning module that met one of the core goals of the agency.

After they had already committed themselves to a specific development and implementation plan, several teams recognized there would be difficulties in sustaining the project beyond the grant funding. Technology capabilities became an issue for most project teams. Several teams needed database driven sites that were not then available on the agency site. Most suffered from a lack of time on the part of the technology personnel, and one needed a larger capacity server. One team's schedule was delayed for months because of an unpredictable variable—the space shuttle take-off.

   Recommendations:

• Validate your project as part of the mission and goals of your agency.
• Define an activity that will both satisfy an objective within the agency and contribute to students' learning.
• Determine the optimum factors that must exist within the agency in order for the project to be developed and sustained.
• Determine any uncontrollable variables that may affect the project and develop a contingency plan to employ in a worst case scenario.
• Explore the limitations (if any) of your agency's web site and related technology and how that might affect the development and implementation of your project.

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