Aztea.org
Title
AzTEA
Description
The Arizona Technology in Education Alliance (AzTEA), an International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) affiliate, is a professional non-profit organization devoted to increasing student achievement through technology in teaching and learning. Our mission is to empower the educational community in Arizona to infuse technology as an integral part of the educational process. We do this by providing advocacy and leadership, promoting educational reform, and supporting technology based innovation through our services, activities, programs, and collaborative efforts.
Early on in the History of Arizona (actually in the 1970’s) when media started to truly emerge as a Science in education, regular, everyday educators started to seek collegial support in making teaching and learning more effective for all concerned. The Arizona Educational Media Association was a small group (maybe 500 in it’s hay-day) of Library Media Specialists trying to introduce the NEWEST technologies of 16 mm film, talking film-strips and records along with that wonderful tool, the overhead projector. AEMA was affiliated with the Association of Education Communication and Technology (AECT) a national organization. Over the years AECT and AEMA concentrated on the visual media and related issues.
Statewide there were a variety of both formal and informal groups (again peer groups) attaching various problems. Sun Valley Idea Exchange, the ADE’s Software Evaluation Group, and Arizona Education Technology Committee (it was AETC – may not have been “committee”) all met, on their own time and expense, to form peer support groups. Some were local to the Maricopa County area – most were state-wide in scope.
