Maryland Public Television (MPT), as a partner with the Maryland Tech Consortium, holds primary responsibility for coordinating the Consortium’s Fall Institute.  

The Fall Institute is based on a teachers-teaching-teachers model. At the center of this staff development experience are the design and modeling of strategies and lessons by selected "mentor teachers".  The mentor teachers, experienced in and currently successfully using technology in their classrooms, create and present hands-on workshops, using a Consortium-developed lesson plan template.  This template guides the mentor teachers in creating interdisciplinary, inquiry-based, reflective teaching modeled, technology-infused lesson plans, focused on using technology to improve reading, writing, and mathematical skills at the secondary level; aligned with Maryland Content Standards; and informed by NSDC and ISTE/NCATE standards.  The mentor teacher-led workshops, as well as Institute workshops targeted at Internet, multimedia software and video utilization techniques, train middle and high school in-service and pre-service teacher-participants to effectively utilize technologies for planning and implementing lessons with their students to improve student performance.

 Fall Institute participants are given the option of earning one continuing education credit for successfully completing the Institute and participating in the evaluation. In addition they have 2 options to earn two continuing education credits:

1.  Produce and implement a 1-2 day lesson plan, using the Consortium-developed lesson plan template used by the mentor teachers at the Institute OR

2.  Conduct an in-service training activity, approved of and signed off by their principal, of at least one hour in length, modeling for colleagues instructional strategies and classroom management techniques learned at the Institute.

Commencing in 2001, awards were presented to the 2000 Fall Institute participants selected by Consortium partners for:

• exemplary in-service presentation, which demonstrates exemplary dissemination of MD Tech Consortium Fall Institute information and resources to other teachers in participant(s) school or district
• exemplary lesson plan creation based on the Consortium lesson plan template.  

The Fall Institute is open to teachers from across the state of Maryland, but its primary audience is teachers from the three MTC Target school districts:  Montgomery County Public Schools, Baltimore County Public Schools, and Prince George's County Public Schools.