CCT recently evaluated the Miami Museum of Science's Project START, a three-year project funded through the Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to Use Technology (PT3) program.

PT3 specifically supports projects involving collaborations among higher education institutions, state agencies, school districts, nonprofit organizations, and others to prepare technology-proficient teachers through improvements in teacher preparation programs.

Working in six southeastern states (Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina), the START program provides higher education faculties of arts and science and education with tools and training to help prepare tomorrow's teachers to integrate technology-rich learning resources into the science curriculum.

The START project is designed around a series of four-day professional development institutes for state facilitation teams composed of university faculty and technology trainers committed to initiating preservice reform. The goal of these institutes is to model the use of faculty training modules that participants will use in their own workshops and classes to teach technology integration to other university faculty and future K-12 teachers. Through these institutes participants have the opportunity to explore technology-rich learning materials, view exemplary practices, and discuss and plan strategies for replicating the training at their own institutions. The START project also provides continued support through online mentoring and technical help, a robust START website, and a regional conference to highlight challenges, successes, and further collaborative opportunities beyond the institutes as teams implement the START model in their own states.