Blake: Work Priorities

NEA has partnered with the GEM Exchange, Gateway to Educational Materials, and JES & Co to support Gateway to 21st Century Skills, a website that combines state-of the art search technologies and a complete database of state academic standards for core subjects. The Gateway is your link to the resources you need to make learning meaningful and fun for your students.

Statistical tracking that began July 1st of 2006 shows that 163,348 unique visitors made 231,191 visits, viewed 1,055,055 pages and created 10,113,662 hits on the Gateway through the 13th of December 2006. Informal observation of Gateway membership registration shows that of the domestic registrants 35% to 40% have declared themselves to be NEA members. NEA ranks third in top referring sites to the Gateway, exceeded only by eduref.org (ERIC) and ed.gov.

Read the full report

NEA renews support for Gateway to 21st Century Materials. Moving ahead in 2007-08, GEM currently hosts 13 branded affiliates, one college of education and 3 State Department's of Education.

NEA will meet at the end of the month and in November to plan upcoming innovations to:

1. Engage more state affiliates to brand
2. Engage Colleges of Education to brand with GEM and add to their Web pages
3. Brand GEM with MySpace, Google, Digg and other search/news/social networking tools
4. Continue viral campaigning of NEA programs, issues and products via GEM
5. Continue to add innovative functionality to GEM--e.g., update browser toolbars, YouTube educational pieces, etc.

[Read MOU]