An IDEAL education

Arizona State University gets an A+ for building a unique portal that promises sweeping educational change.

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When 3-year-old Elias Hinojosa goes to kindergarten in Tucson, Ariz., he'll have more than crayons, paper and paste at his disposal. He'll also have access to a host of interactive educational tools, thanks to a state-sponsored Web portal built and managed by Arizona State University.

From kindergarten through 12th grade, Hinojosa will head to the Integrated Data to Enhance Arizona's Learning (IDEAL) portal for math and reading practice tests, supplemental online courses, interactive learning exercises and state-required advanced-placement tests. He'll also turn to IDEAL for learning materials, coursework and video resources his teachers have placed there to supplement their classroom presentations.

Ultimately, Hinojosa and as many as 1 million other students will have access to the IDEAL portal, enabled with the open source uPortal software. For now, 300,000 students are authorized to log on to IDEAL to check out sample tests; coursework is not yet available but will be soon.

In addition to the students, the state's 60,000 K-12 teachers have access to the portal, not only to provide supplemental coursework but also for links to student demographics, improvement guidelines, grades and benchmarks. Teachers manage coursework on IDEAL through Sakai, an open source course management and collaboration application.

The focus of this innovative educational initiative is to use technology to enable lifelong learning, says Sam DiGangi, assistant vice provost for IT at Arizona State University (ASU), in Tempe. "IDEAL is not just access to a Web site, but accounts that will stay with students through their schooling and, conceivably, their entire career," he says.