Alice Santiago has been the Director of MetroLINC and is now Assistant Director of Instructional Technology for Program Development for Boston Public Schools. A Walpole resident, Alice has provided leadership in the field of educational technology since the early ’80s when she worked for the Bureau of Educational resources at the Massachusetts Department of Education. During this period she helped to organize professional development sessions for teachers, and she learned to program computers using Dbase software. Her educational journey is an inspirational odyssey that is a model of persistence, academic excellence, and creativity.

Alice left the field of education for a short time, and during this period she developed her own consulting business and provided corporate computer training on specific software packages. However, when she conducted a workshop for teachers at the Chapter One Computer Cooperative Center (C4), she rediscovered her passion for education. Before long she joined the C4 staff and provided many in-house and statewide, innovative, technology integration workshops for teachers. Before many educators even thought of using the Internet, Santiago was presenting powerful workshops demonstrating how the Internet could be used in curriculum activities. In 1998 Tom Plati, Director of Libraries and Educational Technologies for the Wellesley Public Schools, was a participant in one of those workshops. He commented, “The five of us came away from the workshop firmly convinced of the significance of the Internet in providing important pathways for academic instruction. In the year that followed, we utilized much of what we had learned as we mentored teachers in the different subject areas.”

As the director of Boston’s MetroLINC Technology Challenge Grant, Alice continues to demonstrate her innovative leadership as she utilizes the full potential of the Internet. MetroLINC reaches over 33,000 predominantly inner-city students, and its primary goal is to improve student performance to support state and district-wide curriculum standards. In this capacity she has helped to develop a powerful web portal, MyBPS, that provides key support structures in curriculum, instruction, and assessment to Boston Public Schools. Teachers can access professional development materials, website information, curriculum course guides, and even assessment data on their students. Santiago has set high expectations for helping educators gain the skills and understanding they need to effectively integrate technology into their classrooms. With the MetroLINC Grant ending on September 30, Alice has now become Assistant Director of Instructional Technology for Program Development. She will continue to work with schools and administrators to enhance the web portal, MyBPS, for Boston Public Schools.

            Selected as a national “Shapers of the Future” in Converge Magazine (August, 2002), Alice has a keen sense of what is going on nationally, in terms of technology. She helped to develop and implement the electronic Developmental Reading Assessment (e-DRA) Project, a highly successful program that provides teachers with an expeditious method of administering the DRA electronically using a Palm Handheld Computer. She is also an adjunct-faculty professor at Lesley University, Fitchburg State, and Wheelock College, and she keeps up-to-date on educational technology trends and programs. Alice Santiago’s commitment to student and teacher training in the field of Educational Technology uniquely qualifies her to receive a MassCUE Year 2003 Pathfinder Award.