Berkshire Resources for Learning and Innovation

What is BRLI?

BRLI has shifted our name to Berkshire Resources for Learning and Innovation (BRLI).  The acronym remains yet our new name is more reflective of the work we are engaged in including professional development and regional collaborations with a significant focus on educational technology.

Beginning in the spring of 2020 as The Berkshire Remote Learning Initiative, (BRLI) began as a consortium of Berkshire County school districts partnering to adopt a shared learning management system (Canvas). Our goal was to ensure equitable access to high quality online/remote learning for students across the Berkshires, in light of current COVID-19 concerns by collaborating in that moment as well as for the future. We focused on:

• Sharing a learning platform that is powerful, highly flexible, and adaptable for multiple curricula and those who learn differently
• Cultivating virtual spaces for collaboration, professional development, and support
• Bringing schools and communities together to share resources, build countywide networks, innovate to expand educational quality and opportunity, and address regional inconsistencies

Our overall project goals evolved to include:

• Foster Strong Connection Among School Districts
• Provide Robust Support for Learning Across Multiple Modalities
• Facilitate Teacher Collaboration and Professional Development

BRLI has been fortunate to have been awarded funding from MA DESE in 2022 and 2023 with the Building Capacity for Effective Ed Tech Use Grants (FC124). This work has focused on building our regions educators skills through effective ed tech use, lesson and unit design, as well as alignment to MA DLCS standards and ISTE standards. We focus on cross district collaboration and professional learning through a variety of means including

• Drop in sessions
• Short and long form courses/experience
• Focused professional development aligned to the needs of our BERK12 partner and BRLI project districts

BRLI Project Districts in The Berkshires include:

• Berkshire Arts and Technology (BART) Public Charter School
• Berkshire Hills Regional School District
• Lee Public Schools
• Lenox Public Schools
• North Adams Public Schools
• Pittsfield Public Schools
• Richmond Consolidated School

Courses and workshops created in 2020-2021 can be found at the link below.