Project ALERT is now 100% online.

Remember the advent of the laptop? Then tablets and smartphones came along. There are apps, e-books, streaming videos and more. Project ALERT gets it. We’ve taken a big step forward by making our entire program digital. And free.


Welcome to Project ALERT, Version 2011–12 

The new Project ALERT website is designed for the way you work today. We are introducing new eReader technology that allows you to access the Project ALERT curriculum and training program entirely online. The approach makes teaching our program easier than ever.

The new “reader” software works on tablets and virtually any computer. All you need is an internet connection.

Everything you need is neatly organized and accessible right on your screen. Point and click to turn lesson plan pages, call up student handouts, find resource materials and even share documents. With the entire program at your fingertips, you can access and print out program materials at your convenience to complement the way you teach.


Goodbye paper. Hello savings.

Why be bound to the past? The digital era allows us to bypass the need for traditional binders and preprinted materials. Many teachers have trained online this way. Going 100% digital in the classroom is a natural and cost-effective next step.


Advantages of the new online Project ALERT

Free. And easy.

“The program is free? How can that be?”

If we were a commercial business, you might think we were having a fire sale or going away. Quite the contrary. Project ALERT is one of the most widely accepted and effective substance abuse programs in the country, used by more than 4000 school districts and 21,000 middle grade teachers. We’re not going anywhere—except rapidly into the future.


“Okay, so why are you providing online open access?” Glad you asked.

1. Eliminating Your Cost – By offering the entire Project ALERT program online, we avoid the costs of binders, printing, DVDs, postage and other expenses. With the savings, we can eliminate your cost of acquiring the program. How great is that! What’s more, having our program online makes it easier for us to update lesson plans, videos and other materials. You can have current information more quickly.

2. Ease of Use – Many teachers already use Project ALERT’s online training and resources. We think that most, if not all, teachers will also take advantage of easy to use online access to lesson plans, posters, videos, as well as email-ready parent and student handouts.

3. Greening – The digital age offers benefits beyond the classroom. Putting our entire program online is part of a larger plan to be kind to our planet—so future generations will have a greener place to live and learn.

4. Technology Alignment – Students are growing up in a digital age. It’s only natural that we offer our program, including communications with students and parents, through the technology tools of today.

5. Efficiency – Doing more with less is an idea for the times. Our new approach supports the current needs of education, and the way students are learning, sharing and communicating every day. 


What’s online and how things work

All lesson plans and reference materials
The entire Project ALERT curriculum is accessible online and easy to teach from a computer. From each lesson, you can draw on all the supplemental materials you need without having to jump to another web page. By simply clicking on hotlinks, you can call up reference materials and organize your teaching strategies. Student handouts and homework are right at your fingertips for printing out or emailing to parents and students.

“You say it’s easy to stay on the same page while I access my training and teaching materials?”

Absolutely. Our site is completely reconfigured using smart technology. Gone are the tedious “back and forward” modalities that can leave users frustrated and literally “lost” within a site.

“How exactly does that work”?

The training and teaching process has a “dashboard” from which you can access desired materials without having to track forward and backward on the site. It’s very intuitive and practical—almost like arranging printed documents on your actual desk, but in a smaller footprint—all on your screen.


Streaming online videos just a click away
Previously, the Project ALERT videos were on a DVD included with your Project ALERT kit. Now the videos are easily accessed from the Project ALERT website under Resources. They are also available on YouTube and TeacherTube, along with previous Project ALERT classroom videos.

Posters to display
Project ALERT posters can now be displayed onto classroom monitors or screens via your computer. And coming soon, they’ll be available for download.

Online training
More good news: You no longer need an access code to train. Just set up your free account. It’s part of our open approach to making Project ALERT accessible to as many teachers as possible.

How easy is it? Ask any teacher who has completed our training online and you’ll probably hear words like these: “convenient, thoughtfully organized, easy to use, who needs a workshop?” In fact, thousands of teachers have used online training with success.


Other viewable and downloadable materials
Project ALERT’s new site will still feature a large library of additional documents for viewing and downloading, including the following:

•    Implementation Tips
•    Assessment Tools
•    Research
•    Content Alignment
•    Logic Model
•    Case Studies
•    Newsletters
•    Drug-Use Statistics
•    Resources + Links
•    Perspectives from our staff

Here at Project ALERT, we’re all about the solution. We understand budget cuts and shifting priorities. We’d like to help you move forward by making our proven-successful Project ALERT program easier to adopt and use.

After all, what could be more important for middle grade students today than substance abuse prevention? When drugs, alcohol and inhalants get in the way, the entire educational experience suffers. By making our program free, we make it easier for you and your students to get the substance abuse prevention they need.


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Technical Support
We’re here to help!

If you have any questions or encounter any challenges with the new online Project ALERT, we invite you to contact us in the way that works best for you.

You can still receive the curriculum materials and teach like before. A limited supply of Project ALERT kits are available for the cost of shipping and handling. And Project ALERT will still offer training workshops on request at cost.

Stay in touch. We look forward to hearing from you.

info@projectalert.best.org

Phone: (213) 623-0580

Fax: (213) 623-0585

Toll-Free:  (800) ALERT-10 or  (800) 253-7810


Monday - Friday 7:00am - 4:00pm Pacific Standard Time

725 S. Figueroa Street, Suite 1825, Los Angeles, CA 90017

Project ALERT educator, here’s your assignment:

Present Project ALERT by yourself to students in grades seven through twelve in thirteen schools in Alaska that are in remote villages scattered throughout an area the size of West Virginia. Your largest school has seventy students and the smallest has ten. Because these schools are “off road,” they are accessible only by air, requiring that you book one of the five to nine seats on the local mail plane—provided there’s room. It also means staying flexible: you fly whenever the pilot is ready, give or take a few hours.

Once you reach the first school, you’ll have to stay overnight. The village is tiny and if it lacks itinerant housing, you might need to sleep on a cot in the school’s science room. On rare occasions the school must close because the wind is throwing rocks at it. Outside, winter temperatures can plunge to twenty degrees below zero. After visiting this school, you still have twelve to visit—all via the mail plane.

Kasie Pletcher, a counselor with the Lake and Peninsula School District (lpsd.com) on the Alaskan Peninsula—the “tail” of land extending south from the Alaska mainland—wondered if there was an easier way. Kasie joined the two-person counseling department in the fall of 2010. Delivering Project ALERT to the district’s students was one of the responsibilities assigned to her. Not only had her predecessor run into obstacles trying to present the program in person at each school (see above), but district budget cuts had decreased the allowance for staff travel, limiting how many visits Kasie could make to each school.

She was fortunate with Lesson One, for she was able to present it to all the seventh through twelfth graders when they attended a district athletic meet. But even though Kasie knew she’d never get all the lessons taught this year, she wanted to present at least two more. Students needed them. Alcohol and drug abuse is a major problem in Alaska. Meth usage is growing, and an estimated one in three native Alaskans uses tobacco. Usage is impacted by isolation, particularly during Alaska’s six to seven months of winter, regardless of individuals’ poverty or prosperity.

 

Technology to the Rescue

Kasie had an idea. All faculty members were familiar with a web-based program the district was trying out called Webex. Administrators were testing its applications for at-a-distance professional development. Even in the most remote locations, staff could log into the Webex site to participate in web conferencing with other educators in the district. They could see and hear each other and view videos and handouts. Schools also had smartboards, that could interface with Webex so that participants could write out questions or responses that were visible to everyone signed onto the website.

Kasie reasoned that she could use this technology to present Project ALERT from her office in Chignik Lagoon. Students hundreds of miles away in places like Igiugig, Pilot Point, and Kokhanok could listen to her presentation and see visuals pertaining to the lessons. Assisted by a volunteer teacher, they could use their school’s smartboard to ask and answer questions as they worked together in small groups in their classroom.

Kasie set to work preparing visuals using Project ALERT materials that she would use to present Lesson Two and Lesson Three. She timed each to be ninety minutes in length. Because of classroom testing, scheduling proved to be challenging, but she was able to secure dates just after spring testing was finished. With Webex she could present in up to six schools at a time, so she included the schools north of the district offices in King Salmon, Alaska, in one session, and the schools in the south in a second.

On the appointed day and time, shortly after students in seventh through twelfth grades began the first online class with her, Kasie knew that her experimental delivery method was working. “From the beginning, the kids seemed to be attentive and involved. I was pleased with the thorough responses they gave to my questions.”

A drawback was that students couldn’t watch her as she delivered the lesson. “We have some challenges with technology here,” Kasie explained. “We’ve only had cell phone usage for a year, and just like our landlines and internet, connections in our villages can be unreliable. I knew from using Webex that turning on the live-stream video really slowed the program, so we used just the audio for me. Students could see all the visuals and they could share their typed questions and responses with students in the other schools. I think it worked very well.”

Overall, she was satisfied. “The teachers were happy with it and said their students were engaged. I think the Project ALERT lessons adapt well to this because of the way they’re laid out. The information is specific and that helped in facilitating classroom discussion.”

Drug Abuse Alaska Style

When Kasie arrived in Alaska in August 2010 to assume her new job, she wasn’t familiar with Project ALERT, but she took the online training. She learned very quickly that many Alaskans smoke, drink, and rely on drugs.

“Cigarettes, alcohol, and hard drugs are used heavily throughout the state,” she said. “Lifestyle factors into it. Without roads, people don’t get out and about. Many villages have only a school and post office. Some have a store, so they can buy cigarettes, and a few have liquor stores. But people can get what they want in Anchorage, or they can order it in Anchorage or from Seattle. Supplies are shipped in by plane or on barges or ferries.”

According to Kasie, hard drugs are readily available. “Everybody seems to have connections. I’ve only been here a short time, but whenever I go to Anchorage I always see people I know. Alaska is big—our school district expands 400 miles—but the population is small and people know each other. From what I understand, it’s no problem getting marijuana or meth, which seem to be the drugs of choice. And it’s easy to get over-the-counter and prescription drugs.”

Kasie hopes to deliver even more Project ALERT lessons during the 2011-12 school year. “This is the best program for us because it addresses both drugs and alcohol. We’re the first school district in Alaska to implement substance abuse prevention via distance delivery, but I don’t think we’ll be the last. Though we talk about being on our own planet here, our students face some of the same problems as the Lower 48, and Project ALERT can help.”

 

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Kasie’s Alaskan Adventure

Twenty-five-year-old Kasie Pletcher came to Alaska from her home in Pennsylvania almost on a whim. She had never set foot in the state when she interviewed with the Lake and Peninsula District’s superintendent at a job fair at Penn State. “I was just finishing my master’s degree in counseling and I thought, why not? I love adventure.”

Getting to Chignik Lagoon where she now lives was her first adventure, one that she repeats each time she returns from visits to family in Pennsylvania. Flying from Pittsburgh to Chicago and then onto Anchorage takes a minimum of ten hours. At that point she’s still 450 miles from her Alaska home. After an overnight in Anchorage, she leaves on a 7 a.m. flight to the airport in King Salmon, where she waits for the mail plane to be loaded. If there’s too much mail that day, she may have to stay in King Salmon another day unless some of the mail is left behind. The flight to Chignik takes ninety minutes. There’s no airport. The mail plane lands on a dirt airstrip and Kasie has to hope there’ll be a friendly truck driver around who will drop her off at home.

Her school district likes to recruit teachers from Pennsylvania, Kasie said. “I think we Pennsylvanians do so well here because most of us like the outdoors and our climates are so similar.” Kasie was part of last spring’s recruiting team, stopping at three Pennsylvania job fairs to seek new faculty.

Distance is only one way she’s had to adapt. Chignik Lagoon has fewer than 75 people, a mix of whites and natives. It’s a prosperous fishing village since it’s located on the south side of the Alaskan Peninsula with all its commercial fishing. “My observation is that most fishing communities have money,” Kasie said. “Chignik Lagoon is one of the wealthiest villages in what we call the Alaskan bush, yet people here live very modestly.”

Like other faculty, Kasie lives in an apartment provided by the school district. “The lifestyle here is very different,” she said. “There’s no place to go out to eat or to see a movie, so we socialize by playing board games, cooking dinner, or going for a hike. I love being outdoors and I enjoy the travel to all our schools and getting to know our students.

“I faced a lot of unknowns when I arrived in Alaska. I met people who’ve lived here all their lives and I learned that anybody can do this if they’re willing to try. It’s so beautiful—I decided quickly that it would be okay. I’m glad I’m here.”

 

Andrea Warren is a journalist and author who lives in the Kansas City area. Her seven award-winning nonfiction books for young readers include Orphan Train Rider, One Boy's True Story; and Surviving Hitler: A Boy in The Nazi Death Camps. Her newest, Charles Dickens and the Street Children of London, will be out in November.

We hope you had a great summer. Project ALERT staff is here if you need support as you get ready to teach the program. We wish you a successful year and look forward to working with you!