WIDA & ICMEE COLLABORATION
In December 2017, ICMEE and WIDA leaders began discussing a potential collaboration between the two groups focused on professional learning, design and research. During the 2018-2019 academic year, a Memo of Understanding was signed to begin to pilot the use of ICMEE eWorkshops with several WIDA states. During the Spring of 2019, three ICMEE eWorkshops will be piloted with WIDA states that participate in their Professional Learning Subcommittee. During the Fall of 2019, these three eWorkshops will be available for use across the entire WIDA consortium. They are:
- Reading Supports for Multilingual Students
- Grouping Strategies for Multilingual Classrooms
- Home Languages in the Classroom
We are developing plans to move all of the eWorkshop content that has been and continues to be developed by ICMEE to be available via the WIDA consortium, several eWorkshops at a time.
Our relationship with WIDA is very exciting for the opportunity we have to expand access to our eWorkshop content as well as to continue to learn and play important design and research roles with that content. However, ICMEE is in Nebraska, a state that does not participate in the WIDA consortium at this time. Therefore, we are also committed to working with our local state agency, districts and schools to make our content available and useful here in Nebraska. Yet, once our content has been moved to be available to the entire WIDA consortium, that content will need to be accessed via WIDA mechanisms for everyone outside of Nebraska.
For more information regarding this collaboration, please contact Kara Viesca at icmee@unl.edu
