Under the Ed Tech Program, the U. S. Department of Education provided grants to state education agencies for distribution to eligible school divisions. States must distribute 50% of their allocation in the form of competitive grants to school divisions. In Virginia, this has resulted in the Competitive Consortia Ed Tech Grants.

To maximize the resources of the Commonwealth and the local school divisions, the Virginia Department of Education has awarded eight regional consortium grants. Approximately $5 million will be distributed each year for a five-year period in the form of competitive subgrants for professional development - learning how to use technology that helps to transform the teaching and learning environment. The competitive subgrant has two main purposes. The first purpose is to encourage the effective integration of technology resources and systems with the curriculum. The second purpose is to establish research-based instructional methods that can be widely implemented as best practices.

The eight consortia presented a showcase of their activities at the Educational Technology Leadership Conference. The presentation is available as a PowerPoint presentation below. Each consortium is creating a web site that provides information about its services. You may access the web sites by clicking on the map or colored blocks below.