The Nebraska Educational Service Unit Coordinating Council was created in statute to coordinate the activities of Nebraska's 17 Educational Service Units. The Educational Service Unit Coordinating Council was created by LB 603 in 2007 and officially came into existence on July 1, 2008.

According to Section 79-1246 of the Nebraska Revised State Statutes:

The Educational Service Unit Coordinating Council shall work toward statewide coordination to provide the most cost-effective services for the students, teachers, and school districts in each educational service unit. The council's duties include, but are not limited to:

• Preparation of strategic plans to assure the cost-efficient and equitable delivery of services across the state
• Administration of statewide initiatives and provision of statewide services
• Coordination of Distance Education

BlendEd Tweets

• The goal of Nebraska’s BlendEd Initiative is to implement instructional and content technologies to enhance teaching and learning to support all modes of blended instruction. blended education has been promoted by educational researchers as a one of the most promising recent innovations in education because it calls for making strategic choices about when face-to-face (synchronous) instruction is needed and when and how online (asynchronous) instruction can be best used to provide elements of student control over time, place, path and pace and provide more equity, efficiency and flexibility.  Heather Staker and Michael B. Horn of the Innosight Institute offer this definition of Blended Learning-

“Blended learning is any time a student learns at least in part at a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home and at least in part through online delivery with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace.”- http://www.innosightinstitute.org

The Nebraska BlendEd eLearning System has the potential to revolutionize daily teaching and learning in Nebraska schools and will build upon Nebraska’s strong history and experience of offering video-based distance learning to K-12 students.

It will establish a new paradigm of blended, technology-assisted/enhanced instruction for the traditional face-to-face classroom, allow teachers to better reach and serve their students within the video distance learning classrooms, and also allow the development of fully online courses and modules that can be utilized in the classroom or delivered synchronously and asynchronously to remote learners.

• Statewide, systematic PD
• Data informed collaborative process in partnership with NDE (Rule 84)
• Online Professional Development “platform”

Including PD content systems, LMS, etc.
Groundwork established by statewide collaboration on professional learning networks and content area cadres.

Nebraska Virtual Partnership efforts with NET

1. NET Virtual Library announcement is “phase I”
2. Phase II content sharing and collaboration

BlendEd Instructional Goals

• Organize existing projects around a common theme as the contribution to Nebraska Virtual Partnership and other statewide collaborative efforts.
• Structure professional development around Blended Education and technology integration for schools
• Promote school improvement through enhanced course offerings and student experiences

Infrastructure components of the project include:

• Learning Object Repository (LOR) Content Repository System - to support a statewide digital instructional content repository for existing and future collections of multimedia learning objects and course materials of all types (e.g. audio, video, graphical, textual) that are standards-aligned and meta-tagged (i.e. appropriately cataloged and classified).
• Learning management system (LMS) - to support a statewide learning management system that allows teachers to organize instructional content, support collaborative learning activities, and deliver instruction to students both in and out of the classroom; 
• Federated Directory Services system (LDAP) - to support a statewide directory service that facilitates single sign-on access for every teacher and learner;
• Statewide Professional Development (PD) System: A comprehensive system of professional development for the implementation of BlendEd incorporating LOR, LMS, & LDAP for a singular PD system to provide technology-assisted instructional design training, embedded professional development and PD content shared between and among the NDE, ESUCC and higher education; and
• Evaluative System: A persistent system of assessment, analytics, and interventions that allows the State to diagnose and remedy areas of specific curriculum or teacher shortages (e.g. science, technology, engineering, mathematics, English language learners, advanced placement, etc..).

• Staff Development Affiliate (SDA)
  Members are generally responsible for providing staff development to their school districts and have assisted the Nebraska Department of Education efforts on statewide and local assessment as well as school improvement.


• Technology Assistance Group (TAG)
  Members provide assistance to school districts in the dissemination and integration of new educational technologies deployed  by school districts.


• Network Operations Committee (NOC)
  NOC supports the extensive communications network within and among the ESU's and school districts. NOC provides network security and protocols for their districts and ESU's and ensures the communications network for distance education, internet, email, and phones are functioning and secure.


• Instructional Materials Affiliate (I-Mat)
  I-Mat consists of media professionals from across the state. It serves the dual role of providing for and assisting school districts make use of statewide I-mat media as well as the integration of media  materials  in school districts.


• ESU Special Populations Directors (ESPD)
  This group consists of Special Education Directors and staff from across the state. this group was included in the ESU PDO as the need for special education professional development grew in the age of standards and assessment, and the need to develop and share professional development efforts for special education teachers and classroom teachers alike arose. ESPD is involved with the Nebraska Department of Education in providing leadership for special education training and support as well as programs such as Response To Intervention (RTI).

• To improve our website (we continually strive to improve our website offerings based on the information and feedback we receive from you)
• To improve customer service (your information helps us to more effectively respond to your customer service requests and support needs)
• To administer a survey, provide information, or other site feature

• Improving Learning for Children with Disabilities(ILCD)
  ILCD is a state self-assessment project that gathers information for federal reporting requirements. This is accomplished through the use of surveys, the project uses parent, teacher, and administrative assessments. The results can be accessed via the ILCD website:
  
  http://www.education.ne.gov/sped/ilcd.html
• Project PARA
  Project PARA is a web-based method for school districts to provide intorductory training for their paraeducators. The project assists schools in meeting the paraeducator training requirements of No Child Left Behind, Rule 11, and IDEA. Project PARA is a collborative effort between the University of Nebraska, the Nebraska Department of Education, and Nebraska ESUs.
  
  http://para.unl.edu/index.lasso
• Student Records System (SRS)
  SRS is an online special education record keeping system. It creates all special education documents required by Rule 51, including IEP, MDT, IFSP, and all required notices. The SRS is a highly secured system that organizes and stores documents and provides easy access to files from anywhere via the internet.
  
  http://iep.unl.edu/

Watch Elgart #neblended: “The Changing Face of Education: The Need for Systemic Collaboration” by ESU #3 esu3tv.org/index.cfm?sec=… via @esu3tv

— Matt Blomstedt (@esucc) February 10, 2013

Robotics Curriculum