ALTP News March 10, 2001
Edited by Richard Brincefield

Recent ALTP News

Reminder: ALTP BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING (OPEN)

Wednesday, March 28, 2001
7:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. 

• Phoenix: US WEST, 3033 N. Third St., Room 208.09
• Tucson: US WEST, 333 E. Wetmore, Room 323

Dial-in attendance: contact tkraver@qwest.net

ACTION AGENDA         Saturday,  March 10, 2001

Arizona Learning Technology Partnership, Inc.
Governors Strategic Partnership for Economic Development

SPECIAL SINGLE TOPIC EARLY EDITION

I. NOTES: ARIZONA SCHOOL FACILITIES BOARD AND QWEST NETWORKING CONFERENCE

This is important, breaking news so here is next weeks Action Agenda early.

Today was a day for celebration.

About 5 years ago, building on the work of ASPED, Phoenix Futures Forum, Kathryn Kilroy’s TIEDS project at ADOE, Apple’s hosting of a monthly lunch for a cadre of technology directors, Gary Bitter and MEC at ASU and a host of others within Arizona education, two initiatives were launched within GSPED. One was the creation of the Arizona Telecommunications and Information Council. Their advocacy with the legislature created and funded the Governor’s Telecommunications Policy Office leaded by John Kelly. After several twists and turns, Governor Hull came into office and made it right by creating the Governors Information and Technology Agency (GITA).

The other was the Arizona Learning Technology Partnership. Through their strategic planning and advocacy with the legislator for including technology in the Students First Legislation, and then with the School Facilities Board with the Deficiency Guidelines the stage was set to fund the telecommunications infrastructure and computers into every classroom in Arizona. Again Governor Hull made the right decision and chose a strong implementation leader in the person of Phil Geiger as School Facilities Board executive director.

Today: SFB and GITA are collaborating to rollout broadband telecommunication structure to every community and every classroom in Arizona. This rollout is not just bandwidth and computers. It is base on a New Economy vision with community and school planning, that positions Arizona as a lead state in getting its act together. It is not the end but the foundations for a new beginning. A foundation that can, if Arizona maintains focus and investment over the next ten years address our two great problems. These mutually linked problems are effective K-12 education for every single Arizona child and workforce-economic opportunities for all Arizona citizens.

When we face this great digital divide, we must do more than what we do with our great natural divide the Grand Canyon. It is just not good enough to fly across or drive around. We must bridge across and bring all of Arizona the fruits of the emerging information economy. We have a grand opportunity. Check out the words of Governor Hull and the first phrase of today’s Keynote Speaker…….

Notes from the presentations.

Governor Jane Dee Hull:

We have Tim Hogan to thank for Students First and having Arizona in a position of national leadership in assuring every school building is up to effective standards including technology. Dr. Geiger in on the front lines in assuring that the SFB and the local districts are collaborating effectively. We now have 45,000 new computers in the classrooms with 3 years of maintenance and technical assistance. We are bringing the web to all rural schools. Teachers will be able to take classes for professional development over the Internet. Thanks to Qwest, Cisco and all the parties making this possible.

With Education as our leading mission we are proud of the great opportunity of the SFB, the funding from proposition 301 that goes directly to the classroom, bringing good schools up to standards and quality, using technology in the classrooms by day and opening up to community in the evenings, and pushing toward adequate salaries. By moving Arizona up from the 50^th state in funding we expect to also have Arizona K-12 academic performance to increase significantly.

Keynote Speaker Alan November

Arizona is now ahead of every state, don’t blow it!!!!!!!!

More kids are living at home, even in this great economy and high employment. These kids caught in the transition from the industrial to information economy. Boomerang kids, throw out and come back. Community colleges becoming new graduate schools. A number of current and critical issues:

It is like "Grapes of Wrath" where small family farms are destroyed and people must go to California. No long is it important to have every student become a tractor expert, the new technology of that day. What kids needed to know at that time was how to leave the farm.

Unintended consequence of destruction of the family farm was the erosion of the dust bowl because of the massively plowed farms. Unintended consequence with information age is the digital divide.

Need to assure that needed skills are taught today. Technology skills are not very important. Most can be taught in 20 minutes. Techy skills like DOS come and go. Kids today need to know how to manage their own learning with an Internet world, not how to repair a network or to use Word.

1. Most important is being self directed and disciplined. This has to be taught within the context of the entire learning process.
2. Also, teach kids how to validate the information coming off Internet. Need information literacy, not computer literacy.

3. Raise Expectations. Do best work you can. US produces 10% of students as top achievers. Singapore, Israel, Ireland 50% are top achievers.
4. Change Culture. Connect by Internet, hand off assessment to others. Kids will accept criticism from outside better than from teacher.
5. Fear of technology still exists. Loss of control. It is like we circle the wagons and the start shoot into the circle.
6. Phenomenal increase in performance. Read "In the Age of the Smart Machine : The Future of Work and Power -- Shoshana Zuboff. Can automate but that is just bolting the machine on top of a current process. Infomate will provide access as never before, other’s work, and personal relationships. One teacher of astronomy has each student take Hubble data and discover something no one has seen before. Has retired Admirals and Captains assess student work. Move from PowerPoint and Word. Having students put all work onto their own website. No more handing in a paper and getting a grade and then tossing the work. K-12 portfolio can be built. Have math for four years without the algebra, geography, and calculus differentiation. Have one-room school houses. Use artificial intelligent student writing assessment, better than skilled human and also no time. Will have other assessment tools within two years. Funbrain.com that kids love quizzes and thinkquest.org for 1000’s of student projects on line. Do staff development with children. But need wavers on everything to have the flexibility to explore all the emerging offerings of technology in schools.

Schools have been designed under the Fredrick Taylor factory model. Now the critical issue is teacher-student relationship. Example from Lizard Lick NC: Middle school kids design their own homework, results in increased difficulty and completing. Teams do everything. Use Internet to find people to assess their work. Rosa Parks and Athea Robinson worked with them on segregation project. The key is to have the kids work on authentic projects.

Phil Geiger School Facilities Board Executive Director

Main support from GITA and Governor’s office. "Not just another state agency" is the School Facility Board’s handle. Cortez Theory – burn the boats and strike out into the unknown. Kids only go through school once, cannot recall and fix later. Urgent, every week’s delay hurts kids.

Note: Meet and hear Dr. Arthur Levine of Columbia University (#1 education graduate school), April 26^th, 4:30 at state capital. All are invited.

SFB plan is 100 mbs in classroom, caching in schools, streaming, content manager, ASP (application service provider), and everybody needed something. If not Cisco will honor that as equipment vendor.

Completion date is 2002 of June with 220+ schools, 1200 schools, 800,000 students, 114,000 square miles. Started a month ago. Each site has a cable engineer and a network engineer. Network design is an art, different for every school. Then a proposal and statement of work to be reviewed by PM, SFB and schools. Order materials, staging and engineering with testing of equipment, cable plant installed and tested. Then service turned on and accepted by SFB and school district. Then ongoing monitoring and support. Project time line in three 30 day chunks: 1. Survey, design, order; 2. equipment delivery and cable plant installation; 3. hardware staging and testing, installation, turn up and acceptance.

Professional development needed to be provided with ASSET under Kathryn Kilroy. Leverage Gates foundation funding. Need 40 hours spread over year, and learning theory for all teachers. 24 hr hot line available.

Contend is king:

High speed connectivity – fiber to school, GITA-TOPAZ as business increases in communities then fiber comes in. Will provide either reasonable satellite or wireless. All kids have rights to tools.

ASP will go out for bid. Need collaborative responses. Looks for site resources to "herd all cats" into the ASP. State will fund to 6/30/05. Did not want pipeline to nowhere. Overlay on ASP from home or school. Get resources in Spanish English, text or URL, any mode. Textbooks are inadequate. Will rent books, by page or chapter. Just access for tools, not mandatory. Private industry is using ASP’s. Will provide firewall at central district and filtering software.

Also 3 years of remote monitoring by Qwest to catch problems before failure. Qwest was on all state contracts. Sr. VP of Qwest is paying attention to SFB and Arizona. Three years of onsite maintenance with computer.

Work with us. Have $1.2 billion in funds to get approved, $150 million of that is technology. SFB provides standard architect contract. Architects and PMs collaborate for value engineering. Project managers provide daily supervision. PM communicates via web to schools, SFB and contractors. Tracks events, costs and projects. Common IT package software and SFB provided licenses to schools.

Nine project managers and firms have been approved, goal is to make you happy. They were selective competitively including small local firms. Excellent experience with working through the complex architectural repairs and remediation as well as the critical IT piece. Kitchel, Pinnacle One, abacus, GVE, Heery, Vanir Consturction, DMJM, etc. Get the needs of schools problem solved.

WEB commission encourages states to aggregate under state contract with additional discount. Doing 228 pilot projects. The Exec. Director can decide to cancel contract. Qwest have engineered 87 schools in past two weeks. It will happen, have sense of urgency. Highly robust 100 mbs in a matter of months, and 1 giga bit will follow. Transverses digital divide. Student has portfolio over entire K-12 on ASP, follows between schools. Connection to rest of communities. Economic engines to communities. Cisco academies throughout state with GITA and SFB working together.

Every computer in every classroom will be connected (have or on order). Will offer through Cisco Academy to train kids as Cisco and Nortel engineers.

Why partner with Qwest?:

All off state contract

Can employ 100’s of people to deploy to 1200 schools, can blitz Arizona

Single point of contact

Can work with Qwest if meet pricing structure

Partnerships the industry leaders

3 year remote monitoring and site service provided

Review every school-by-school and work to assure correct to plan

Will pay direct from state

Rich Zelnick: Governors Information and Telecommunication Agency

SFB; "Not just another state agency" is impressive. Before GITA, state lacked a vision, no centralized standardized project approval or monitoring. Many incompatible systems with policy and standards. GITA was created 4 years ago. Executive, legislative and courts supported creation. Director is state CIO and CIO sits on governor’s cabinet. Now has statewide technology plan with standards. Review and approve all IT projects over $25K and provide oversight for projects. Do not want technologists to drive technology.

GITA’s role is to maximize limited resource, such as SFB purchase. Leverage state’s purchasing power, largest purchaser in the state. A year ago this power was aggregated.

Governor Hull telecom development initiative from APNE. Bridge the opportunity gap for all citizens and address the digital divided in all communities via the schools. Level the economic playing field for business statewide. Not just schools and government, but for homes. Will use this public sector buying power to support to homes. Focus is on telecom infrastructure in Education and distance learning, electronic government (auto tag renewal), telemedicine and rural economic development.

Telecommunications Open Partnership from Arizona (TOPAZ) is the build out throughout Arizona. Markets are not enough and state driving out to rural is not enough. Together they can bring telecom are everywhere.

Schools are big dog in game. Schools are anchor tenants. Partner with private sector with telecom providers. Arizona must leverage influence of school who are high volume users. Speak with one voice.

Brad Tritle Governors Information and Telecommunication Agency

Projects:

1.Community assessments: Information Technology Strategies has the tool to guide $1 million to go Arizona communities to create IT vision on what they could become. Then base telecommunication roll out to support this vision. Will have all community leaders together with K-12 and Community colleges.

2. Also federal grants for rural communities. Fiber and rights of way are opening up. Individual states are now laying fiber on interstate highways and can bring access and bigger pipes to rural communities.

3.Arizona Telecommunications directory is being done by ATIC. Will be finished by this spring.

4. TOPAZ: Governer Jane Dee Hull, State Procurement Office, Government Information Technology Agengy and ADoEd, SFB, ADoLibraries and Archves, ADoCommerce. Will not go private networks. Push with State agencies getting a contract to have eight carriers provided to 180 communities. One Purchase Order from DES, with condition to migrate to most cost efficient network.

QWEST: John Walker lead in Arizona and Tom Hall Sr. VP. Indirect Channels and Government Markets.

New Qwest: not old US West. On steroids with and attitude. Bandwidth is now. Historic of multiple state agencies. What, $ and time frame are unique in Arizona. Education is key of land of opportunity. Leadership can demonstrate what can happen. Very committed to project.

Qwest was subsidiary to Southern Pacific Railroad – fiber along tracks with broadband networking at high speeds. Acquired three communications companies (Supernet, LCI and ICON CMT) and merged with US West in 2000. ICON CMT is the installation arm of Qwest. Radically different companies – upstart radical merging with 120 year old company. Leader in DSL into home. Now have union contract with 2-year extension. Size and scale to do the job. 30 million customers, $19 billion revenues, 2.6 million miles of fiber in US. First nationwide IP network operating at OC-192 (10 gbs). HDTV OC-12, TV OC-3. Internet II will be up. Real time health care, x-ray consultation. National, Mexico-Canada, Asia and Europe.

Like a startup, will be investing $9 billion to grow system, more than cash flow. Strategy to grow beyond Qwest problems with huge increase in capacity. Delayed orders down 50%, more technicians, but still way to go. Aiming for best in class service. Strong financial results, is 4^th largest in local phone services and long distance. Market capitalization is high. Qwest Interactive will provide design and infrastructure to Arizona schools.

Qwest Governments and Education is K-12 through high education with 300+ sales and support and oldest and largest vertical market at Qwest. Largest telephone company in country working with education. Also E-rate expertise, and back office system for 471 forms efficiency.

Sales and support is channel to Qwest and SFB. Internet2 is project of Univ. Corp. of Advanced Internet Development Qwest is provider of Abilene. $550 million donation to education pursuites. Donate fiber and POP space, Cisco routers and Nortel. Access through universities by OC-3, OC-12 or OC-48.

Internet2 connected to all university networks throughout the world. Arizona students can watch supercollider experiments in Switzerland. Qwest had projects in Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, TEXAN2000, CENIC in California – but California not providing connectivity to network.

Vito Amato, Alex Belous George Ward CISCO New model for education

120 companies , 170,000 students Cisco Academy to learn network maintenance and engineering. 11 languages 25,000 exams a day, with Cisco developed curriculum. Many educational psychologists developing curriculum.

Preparing Students for the 21^st century. Individualized plan, assessment and tracking. School and home, modules self-paced, combinations that meet classroom need. Delivery of rich, state standard relevant resources not e-reading. Database of atomic items to build courses. From network participants, commercial providers and communities.

Equity of information, knowledge, and equity of choice. The network is the opportunity "equalizer". Complete equity across the world.

Problems to be addressed:

1. Choose proven quality education resources and content. Work with developing countries
2. Building LAN’s infrastructure;
3. Creating local content into a network resource. Learning curve. Cannot just scan books. New methodologies become easy to use.

The statewide accessible ASP managing and accessing materials when needed and organizing the "education environment" for learners. Assessment as a network asset. Determining the knowledge level of hundreds of thousands of students dozens of times per month.

Problem is 8:1 student-computer ratio. Need more computers but SFB does not provide the funds for the correct level. The current K-12 classroom does not work with Cisco model. May have to go back to projection TV. Design, built and maintain by Cisco. The student will learn everything about networks.

In Arizona 14 installations with free hardware in reservation or empowerment zone.

www.cisco.com/edu

Basic Cisco training methods can be applied to any form of K-12 education curriculum.

Four steps of course completion:

Instructional design, with standards

Authoring tool

Delivery engine

Management system.

Pre-post tests, ASP is hub. Pedagogy, content, evaluation, reporting, and then there is technology side, delivery part.

Learning Management System will be compliant with the emerging standards like SCORM and IMS as they emerge. Tool only, but schools will author curriculum, and will be used like any resources Is a training and hosting presence to enable al schools to create content for themselves and network partners. Using centrally hosted collaborative tools with special insight then success can be shared.

Will integrate streaming video (network hog) but need pedagogical design. Have math and critical thinking skills in program. Spent years on web-based skills and assessments. Streaming video currently reinforces curriculum concepts for site services and crimping cable. Streaming video is not end-all, just a piece of the curriculum. Must have broadband. Web based lab "Pods" provide drill and practice skills based knowledge.

Personalized learning environment has assessment of objective-level knowledge. Based on results, build a course specifically for student List of strengths and weaknesses and pointers back to curriculum or supplemental material. Adaptive questioning on horizon. Use both drill and assessment for feedback that is not disruptive, just part of the process. Has both linear and non-linear approaches.

Basic theory, web page has imbedded items. PowerPoint, streaming video, simulations all based on assessable moment. Build a page with tasks on page. With web interface will have individualized curriculum.

X. MINI-BYTES OF WISDOM:

A fool hath no dialogue within himself, the first thought carrieth him without the reply of a second.

-- Lord Halifax

...one of the most notable characteristics of any Age of Conflict is the effort to achieve economic expansion by political rather than by economic means.

-- Carroll Quigley

Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.

-- Walt Whitman

The ALTP News/Action Agenda is produced by the Arizona Learning Technology
Partnership http://altp.org, and edited by Richard Brincefield rbrincefield@softrain.com.

To subscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ASUVM.INRE.ASU.EDU with the message
body "SUBSCRIBE ALT-SIG Jane Hull" (or your own name, if it's not
"Jane Hull").

To sign off the list, send email to LISTSERV@ASUVM.INRE.ASU.EDU with the
message body "SIGNOFF ALT-SIG".