ALTP News July 8, 2000
Edited by Richard Brincefield

Recent ALTP News

Reminder: ALTP BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING (OPEN)

Thursday, July 27, 2000
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,  July 8, 2000

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

The Arizona Partnership for the New Economy (APNE) had their kick off meeting July 7, 9:30 am - 3:30 pm at the Arizona Biltmore. The goal of this meeting will be to review the results of the planning phase and launch the action phase. A working draft of the Vision was handed out. A set of 5 slides were created and handed out by Oris Friesen that addressed a summary of ALTP’s position on E-Learning. They follow this meeting report. A half dozen ALTP board members were present at the meeting.

The five Hot Teams were announced. Their purpose:

They will have three to five meetings to deliver a "Break Through" business plan by October 2000. They will have single-minded focus and be creative and fast. The memberships will be composed of cross-disciplinary groups, representing the highest levels of their companies/organizations and contribute a unique perspective to the Hot Team’s focus. There are still several leadership slots to fill and no members were announced.

E-LEARNING AND NEW TALENT (??? and ???)

KNOWLEDGE LEADERS, ENTREPRENEURS AND CAPITAL (Bill Lowe – ex-IBM, Tucson, PC team leader in 1981 and ???)

COMMERCE AND CREATIVE COMMUNITIES (Drew Cohen of NeoPlanet and ???)

BUILDING CONNECTIONS TO OPPORTUNITIES (Sergio Carlos Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and Mary Upchurch AT&T)

THE E-GOVERNMENT EDGE (Betsy Bayless Secretary of State and Frank Fairbanks Phoenix City Manager)

Note: Arizona is already rated the #1 state in E-Government. Seeing the movie "The Patriot" (with Mel Gibson) last week jiggled out this thought.

"The United States was judged the leading democracy in the world in 1776. All it had left to do was to whip the British." Ted Kraver

Capturing the New Economy for Arizona will probably be as daunting, take as long, will require the same level of commitment, but hopefully be much less bloody.

The following five research papers were presented, starting with our favorite:

E-LEARNING AND NEW TALENT

Summary: E-Learning consists of more than universal access to web-based education; it includes widespread use of the highest-quality educational materials, experiences, and teachers drawn from locations inside and outside Arizona. E-Learning can be used to grow the talent pool for specific occupations or to deliver new curriculum to improve basic reading skills of youth. Arizona could be the first- state in the nation to truly capitalize on the rapidly growing E-Learning opportunity by using E-Learning to deliver the most proven curriculum and teaching to the people of Arizona, on their terms, regardless of the barriers they may face. E-Learning could be used to improve the state's performance in two areas necessary to ensure that Arizonans participate in and benefit from the New Economy: educational achievement of youth and educational attainment of adults.

Best practices: Since the E-Learning revolution is just underway, no state has truly emerged at the E-Learning leader – yet. Some early trends are 90,000 college courses are delivered with E-Learning methods. UC Berkeley, U of Michigan and U of VA will be delivering a world class MBA together. Net.Work.Virginia provides high capacity statewide at a flat rate regardless of location. Microsoft and MIT are creating I-Campus. AOL@School in a new online educational system providing portals for schools. Singapore’s learning village provides communications between homes, school and community.

Recommended Strategic Directions for Arizona.

Revolutionalize the delivery of K-12 education- by enriching curriculum and teaching methods in the classroom as well as provide access to knowledge and experiences outside the classroom. Today, for example, nationwide only an estimated 1/3 of students use the Internet for school projects, despite the fact that 95% of schools and 72% of classrooms nationwide are wired. Only 20% of teachers report feeling well prepared to integrate educational technology into classroom instruction.

Transform the lifelong learning process for adults- by providing universal access to education and knowledge regardless of location or socioeconomic situation. Today, the educational attainment of Arizona's working age population is about average among U.S. states. It is below average among young adults compared to the nation. Perhaps online continuing adult education could be used to help change this situation.

Stimulate creation of a statewide electronic learning infrastructure that is accessible to all Arizonans in their homes, schools, or community centers. Arizonans are already reasonably well-positioned, ranking 14^th in online population. However, the state ranks 33^rd in educational technology --- a composite measure of the percentage of classrooms wired for the internet, teachers with technology training, and schools with more than 50% of teachers having school based e-mail accounts.

Use e-learning as a catalyst to achieve specific learning objectives, such as improving literacy of elementary school students, increasing awareness of New Economy careers among middle and high school students, growing the pool of people with high-demand skills in software or semiconductors, and the like.

UseE-learning to help create new learning environments and teams. E-Learning could help link Arizona companies and their employees with K-12 students, connect teachers in one location with groups of students in another location, etc. In fact, E-Learning should be able to facilitate the creation of non-traditional teams of learners across the state.

Create a new intermediary z'n the e-learnt'ng marketplace by playing the role of "consumers guide" in identifying the highest-quality content available, and helping people connect with those sources.

Become a national test-bed for the latest innovations in learning by actively recruiting providers and making Arizona attractive for testing new products and approaches. Become one of the leading e-learning providers to worldwide markets.

The Team may decide, for example, that the real opportunity in E-Learning is not universal access to web-based education, but rather widespread use of the highest-quality educational materials, experiences, and teachers drawn from locations inside and outside Arizona. Alternatively, the Team may decide that using E-Learning to grow the talent pool for specific occupations is the most important place to start. Or, using E-Learning to deliver new curriculum to improve basic reading skills of youth is the first priority.

The E-Learning paper was presented by author, John Melville, Melville@coecon.com, consultant for the Collaborative Economics consultant group leading the APNE process.

(Meeting Comments: In the 1990 the Optics cluster was formed and has now taken Tucson to a world class position in optics. We could form a Learning Technology cluster and seize the opportunity. E-Learning could be the "killer application" like Cisco’s router or Microsoft’s Windows. Need to focus on teacher preparation. This is the basic foundation. The Governor’s Higher Education taskforce needs to be included in this Hot Team. Build from local initiatives like NAU and Rio Salado. Must be very bold in this area. Peter Drucker says this is the next multiple $100 billion industry.)

[Off to a great start. Ted the Ed.]

KNOWLEDGE LEADERS, ENTREPRENEURS AND CAPITAL

The Opportunity: Arizona can position itself as a knowledge leader and entrepreneurial hotspot in the New Economy. In the New Economy, knowledge builds wealth. Regions that invest in and orchestrate their knowledge assets-intellectual talent, businesses, universities, and other research institutions-will prosper most.

(Meeting Comment: Attract VC’s to invest in close, a must for next legislature. Need person like Mario Morino of the Northern Virginia—D.C. area.)

COMMERCE AND CREATIVE COMMUNITIES

The Opportunity: Arizona has some of the most innovative developers in the world and a proven track record for revitalizing communities. Coupled with the state's high quality of life, Arizona can capitalize on this expertise to gain global recognition for developing cutting-edge New Economy communities.

(Meeting Comment: Clusters-communities of knowledge people are most powerful driver of all wealth creation options.)

BUILDING CONNECTIONS TO OPPORTUNITIES

The Opportunity: Arizona can be the first state in the union to guarantee access to advanced communications services to all residents and enterprises.

(Meeting comments: Too weak a report, need to attack the rural and disadvantaged needs head-on with an overwhelming legislative effort. Have a cabinet level position. Get priorities right: users and students taken care of first, footballs stadiums follow. Costa Rica is getting email address and access for every citizen. Create the Web based state wide map for communications and every other asset of interest, like Pennsylvania.)

THE E-GOVERNMENT EDGE

The Opportunity: Arizona is already considered a test bed on many E-Government related activities-procurement, voting, and driver licensing. Now the opportunity exists to achieve significant and powerful breakthroughs that focus on benefits to the customers of government services and programs.

(Meeting comment: How about influencing legislature and government decisions? Electronic Notary is example. Do "Ebay" type of auction for government equipment.)

ALTP E-LEARNING AND NEW TALENT PRESENTATION MATERIALS

TECHNOLOGY ENHANCED LEARNING: Oris Friesen

1. A 21ST CENTURY EDUCATION: MAKING ARIZONA STUDENTS PARTNERS IN THE NEW ECONOMY

2. WHAT IS E-LEARNING?

3. E-LEARNING = TECHNOLOGY ENHANCED LEARNING

4. TECHNOLOGY ENHANCED LEARNING: THE VALUE STATEMENT:

5. A QUOTE by ALAN G. MERTEN:

We use the expression "distance learning" poorly and in an unfortunate way. I prefer the phrase "technology enhanced learning." Technology has a major role to play even when all the students are in a room at the same time and the faculty member is there. If we separate the students from the faculty member in both space and time, then technology has another role to play. We are going to be most effective when we combine technology with human contact. Very few of us think we're going to be able to do everything over the web. That's not the kind of future anyone should want. What we need to aim for is the blend you get when a great motivational teacher uses technology to enhance the information content and presentation format of the learning environment. That's the real future and it's a very exciting one.

Alan G. Merten has been President of George Mason University since 1996. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Wisconsin.

VISION DRAFT

Preface

ALTP is responding to the opportunity of the APNE E-Learning Hot Team by creating a Vision of the potential effect of full adoption of learning technology five to ten years in the future. We decided to create a fresh vision by soliciting input from many of our stakeholder-leader associates. This new composite vision would then be enriched by the results of our two years of research and strategic planning in from 1997 and 1999.

ALTP sent requests to over a dozen learning technology stakeholders for a paragraph long Vision segment in their area of expertise. They were challenged to create a Vision that would present the effect of full adoption of emerging learning technologies five to ten years in the future. The author was requested to assume funding, political will, research based software and learning processes, hardware and telecommunications, and professional development resources did not constrain full adoption.

The following vision elements have been presented in prior Action Agendas.

LEARNING TECHNOLOGY FRAMEWORK

RURAL SCHOOLS

COMMUNITY COLLEGES

ADVANCED DISTRIBUTED LEARNING IN THE WORKPLACE

CAREER TRANSFORMATION

K-12 SYSTEMIC TRANSFORMATION – CO-NECT

TECHNOLOGY FOR HIGH SCHOOL SCIENCE

A draft vision was created and handed out at the APNE meeting. It is preliminary and very much a work-in-process. A number of other ALTP stakeholder-experts are in the process of providing their vision segments. Further integration will be done when all elements are acquired. The direction and needs of the APNE E-learning hot team will be guide the development of this vision. The two vision elements following this preface were submitted last week by library-information specialists.

Vision Elements

UNIVERSITY and COLLEGE LIBRARIES

The demand for outcome assessment has become so great that focus has shifted from teaching experiences to learning experiences. Focusing on skills and attitudes of graduates negates faculty as the lone creators or deliverers of knowledge in course content. Librarians see themselves as partners with faculty, computing personnel and teaching specialists in building strong learning communities. They have developed assessment skills and created a "culture of assessment," evaluating every activity's worth in terms of the results achieved by the learner or customer. Libraries collaborate in developing assessment tools and tools kits that are interdisciplinary and modular and reusable across the curriculum. Libraries have to created innovative information packages (courseware objects), and new spaces for supporting the new learning environment. Significant resources have been redirected to building a digital creation capability. The newly adapted ACRL and Keystone principles support libraries to act as the intellectual commons for the community. Students and ideas interact in both the real and virtual environments to expand learning.

K-12 LIBRARIANS

Information literacy - the ability to find and use information – is now the keystone to life long learning. Innovations in traditional printing techniques have joined with advances in electronic technologies to transform the ways information is sought, gained, and used. To prepare for life-span learning and to become a viable, economically advantaged citizen, the K-12 student is an integral part of this information access and application. The school librarian is the primary leader in the school's use of technology to enhance learning. The school librarian uses technology from the perspective of the technologist, interpreting people, learning, and the tools of technology to create the best possible learning opportunities for students. The school library contains state of the art technology and print resources, which are used as tools to connect students with learning. These resources support all curricular areas and are accessed by students through the collaborative efforts of teachers and professional school librarians.

Betty Marcoux, Ph.D.

Associate Director

School of Information Resources and Library Science

University of Arizona

Kim Grimes

Tucson Unified School District

Arizona K-12 Library User Group Head

LIFE’S WISDOM REDUCED TO A FEW WORDS

Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

• Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

• H.L. Mencken

Success is the child of audacity.

• -- Benjamin Disraeli
  

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".