sitesALIVE Foundation

About the Foundation - Our Philosophy

IMAGINE a classroom that nobody wants to leave…where learning comes ALIVE when teachers have ACCESS to real-world, real-time content and students LEARN from peers around the world about a wide range of cultural, social and scientific topics.

The sitesALIVE Foundation believes that most schools and teachers strive, within the means available to them, to provide the best education possible to children. When new technology permits an improved learning experience, in content relevance, in content up-to-datedness, in excitement and engagement, good schools and committed teachers feel a teaching obligation to use that new technology. That obligation is not always matched by the funds and expertise necessary to make their students the beneficiaries of an improved learning experience.

Yet the vast majority of K-12 teachers and schools in the U.S. are neither facile nor comfortable with the new technology. And many schools systems lack the funds to access enhanced curricula. By 2010, two-thirds of the three million currently active teachers are expected to retire, including many excellent educators who have strong teaching skills and content-knowledge but who lack technical skills. The majority of the teachers replacing them will come from a generation that will have grown up with computer and internet technology. If we wait for this to happen, an entire generation of children will miss the opportunity of better learning. This is clearly unfair to them, and is not in our nation’s interest. It is also unjust to ask committed educators to be content to provide anything less than the best education possible for their students. The sitesALIVE! Foundation was established to attack this problem by providing teacher training workshops for learning how to use the new technology and by providing financial aid to schools (hard pressed by budget constraints) to buy access to live internet content designed for their K-12 curricular needs.

When Gutenberg invented the printing press, and information could be disseminated easily on paper, teaching and learning took a great leap forward. When DaGuerre invented photography, and pictures ("worth a thousand words") could be added to textbooks, a new level of information sharing was reached. When moving pictures and sound could be combined on videotapes, CD-ROMs, etc., further enhancing the learning experience, teachers embraced them. Now, when the Internet permits global, immediate, virtually live input and interaction that makes learning come alive in dynamic ways not available by the previous static technologies, there is a teaching obligation to improve that learning experience for children. Now that geographic barriers to equal access to information can be overcome through technology, we must seize this opportunity.