The Oak Ridge School District has received a $4,468 grant for the 1996-97 school year from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education under the Incentives for School Excellence Program.

The state-funded incentives program will provide $6 million this year to support innovative projects in public schools.

The grant proposal was prepared by Wayne Bock, a technology and language arts teacher at Oak Ridge. The new project was designed to allow students to become hands-on learners by using advanced communications technology.

The main project with the new equipment will be construction of an Internet home page, using HTML computer language, by the students and faculty. The home page will be used to improve school and community communication and will form a means to display student writing and activities and gain valuable experience in applying ideas and concepts to real-world activities. Through these activities, students will gain reinforcement of communications in the areas of writing and photography.

These projects are made possible by equipment obtained through the grant. Three important pieces of equipment received through the grant are the Kodak DC40 camera, a Mustek full-page color computer scanner and the Snappy Video snapshot program. The Kodak DC40 camera enables the students to take digital photographs that can be loaded onto the computer. Once on the computer, the students will manipulate the pictures and then put them onto the home page. The Mustek scanner will let the students scan other student work, in turn allowing the student work to be displayed on the home page. The Snappy Video snapshot program provides a means of transporting videos onto the computer and eventually to the home page. The grant is targeted toward students in grades nine through 12, which are enrolled in technology classes.

Incentive grant proposals are evaluated on a competitive basis at the state level. This year, nearly 1,800 proposals were submitted. According to department officials, 482 regular and 132 targeted incentive grants were awarded for the 1996-97 school year.

The Incentives for School Excellence Program was established by the Missouri Legislature in 1985. The program is now funded with proceeds from the Missouri Lottery.