Chicago Public Schools' Early Learning National Network

www.virtualpre-k.orgwww.virtualk.org

“Time and again the Palantir team has completed their critical pieces of this large and complex project on time and on budget, with the quality and expertise essential to our program’s success.”
— Alicia Narvaez, Director of Virtual Pre-K and K Programs, Chicago Public Schools

Palantir teamed up with Brainforest and the curriculum developers at the Chicago Public Schools to create this innovative national parent involvement resource for parents and teachers on CD-ROM and the Internet. The Virtual Pre-K and Virtual K Web sites are home to bilingual information that helps parents make the most of their children’s early learning. The program addresses key learning concepts with a focus on early literacy and on math, social studies, and science skills. Each lesson pulls together low-cost activities in the classroom, at home, and in the community to reinforce the home-school connection. The latest extension of the program, Virtual Pre-K for Family Child Care, provides a standards-based resource for mixed-age groups of children in the home child care setting.

More than 400 public school classrooms and public libraries in the Chicago area use the program, the first of its kind in the nation. The Dallas Independent School District, a consortium of Southern California counties, the Washoe County (Nevada) School District, and the School District of Philadelphia have also adopted VPK and trained pre-kindergarten teachers to maximize these early-learning strategies.

VPK has been demonstrated to appreciative audiences all over the country, including gatherings of the National Association for the Education of Young Children and the National Association for Bilingual Education. The Virtual K site was not only named a Webby Honoree — it also beat out a number of high-profile nominees, including Atari’s Dora the Explorer, to win the Software and Information Industry Association’s Codie Award, which honors the educational technology solution that best extends traditional learning into the home.

Palantir’s constant goal in the ongoing Chicago Public Schools collaboration has been to empower the sharing of information. “Some of the qualities that set Palantir apart were their sensitivity to the needs of our audience and their ability to tailor the technical aspects of our site to users with a wide range of computer abilities and equipment,” says Alicia Narvaez, Director of Virtual Pre-K and K Programs in Chicago. “Palantir’s highly qualified team worked
tirelessly to address our needs and ensure that the finished product was exactly what we wanted. We are thrilled with the results.”