SAIC to Launch Education Portal

Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego announced that Oct. 10 it will launch an educational portal for teachers nationwide under the Hospitals, Universities, Businesses and Schools program.

The new portal, www.hubscentral.org, provides teachers free Web access to professional development resources and opportunities for enhanced communication with parents, students and peers in the HUBS Education network. The portal includes a lesson plan database, individual teacher homepages and individual classroom pages.

Parents can use the portal to visit their children's classroom pages, where HUBS teachers post school news, classroom activities, student projects, homework assignments and classroom calendars.

Secretary of Education Rod Paige will attend the launch at Conestoga High School in Berwyn, Pa.

The HUBS program is an effort to spur economic development sponsored by a congressional caucus of members from Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland and Pennsylvania. HUBS initiatives encourage collaboration, sharing of technology and development of new technologies and applications across the region.

SAIC, the HUBS program coordinator, organizes coalitions to pursue jobs under the HUBS umbrella. The projects, funded by various federal, state and local governments and private organizations, include emergency response programs, education technology and public health programs, said Brian Hays, HUBS general manager and SAIC senior vice president.

The portal for teachers was one of six projects paid for with a two and one-half year, $5 million grant from the Department of Education, Hays said.

Last year, SAIC and HUBS placed new technologies in classrooms under the Students Achieving Standards program in Pennsylvania. In a pilot project, SAIC provided personal digital assistants to teachers in the Garnet Valley School District in Concordville, Pa. Teachers use the PDAs to assess and record student performance for each of the 11 Pennsylvania mathematics standards.