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ALTP News July 29,
2000 |
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Recent ALTP News |
Reminder: ALTP BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING (OPEN) Wednesday, August 23, 2000
Dial-in attendance: contact tkraver@qwest.net |
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| 072200 | ||
| 071500 | ||
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| To: | ALTP Associates | |||
| From: | Ted Kraver, Chairman 225 West Orchid Lane |
tkraver@qwest.net Phoenix, AZ 85021 |
602-944-8557 (off) 602-861-9150 (fax) |
ACTION AGENDA Saturday, July 29, 2000Arizona Learning Technology Partnership, Inc.
ALTP BOARD MEETING REPORT Attending. Betty Marcoux, Ted Kraver, Julia North, Bob Sutton, Elma Goetz, Mark Goldstein, Oris Friesen. Thank you US West for providing this videoconference site connecting Phoenix and Tucson. The July board meeting was a work session to develop input for the first meeting of the Arizona Partnership for the New Economy (APNE) E-Learning Hot Team. This Hot Team meeting will be held 1:00 to 4:00, August 14th at World Business Building, Room 236, Thunderbird (AGSIM) 59th Avenue and Thunderbird Road, Phoenix.
The Board then worked reviewing, discussion and making suggestions for each major section of both the best practices and Arizona strategies from E-Learning Hot Team Best Practices Paper prepared by APNE consultants. For reference check out: DOE White Papers http://www.air.org/forum/wpapers.htm Advance Distributive Learning Network http://www.adlnet.org/ Established Institutions Delivering Education in New Ways: The UofA Library and Information Sciences supports an Executive MBA program using distance learning in Yuma. Their Dept of Agriculture also has a BS program totally delivered in Yuma via NAU Net. Many K-12 school districts including Washington Elementary and Wilson have document significant increases in academic achievement by training teachers and installing computers with appropriate software in the classroom. David Hestenes of the department (we should maybe start calling them epartments) of Physics at ASU is providing advanced learning technology professional development to all Arizona science teachers with a program developed under a large NSF grant. For many years Rio Salado Community College has been providing e-learning courses. University of Phoenix has one of the largest operation in the world that delivers through e-learning technology. Horizon Charter School, supported by Cox Communications has shown excellent results with heavy investment in technology. US West sponsored Eridicio project at ASU trained 400 of 40,000 Arizona teachers as teacher trainers on how to use e-learning technology. NAU is setting up a system to reach every chapter house on the Navaho nation reservation. The Gates foundation has provided $3.2 million to Ganado School for intensive use of technology. There is also a program for library interns in rural areas. These examples are the tip of the iceberg. A comprehensive study and report is needed as part of the Hot Team implementation. States Expanding Infrastructure and Access to E-Learning: Mark Goldstein will explore QED and MDR to get the latest statistics on Arizona K-12 infrastructure, computers and access. Access to e-learning is dependent on four critical investments: (1.) Teacher/trainer/professor professional development to used these new methods, (2.) Adequate commuters (from 4:1 to 1:1 depending on the situation), (3.) The latest and most effective software and media to support individual and collaborative learning, and (4.) Full transformation of the learning system to effectively integrate technology into the teaching process. Technical support and broadband telecommunication access are a necessary foundation, but they are well on the way to be being implemented. The John Badal study that is part of the Arizona Telecommunications and Information Council effort to address the issue of getting cost effective broad bandwidth telecommunications into our rural communities will be provided by Oris Friesen, chair of ATIC. Wireless access being developed at the Arizona Health Sciences Laboratory could be a prototype. New Sources of Education Content and Delivery Emerging: The Arizona Board of Regents must address the "12 semester hours on campus" rule for a degree if full e-learning is to be implemented. Ted Kraver will talk to Art Ashton. Eugene Sander dean of the UofA Agriculture dept. has a challenge on continuing to support innovation diffusion through education and training to the state’s farmers. The national program, Advanced Distributing Learning System, has made significant progress in the past three years in developing and implementing standards for web based learning systems including course content modules. This White House, Dept. of Defense, college, and industry collaboration has spent many $million in developing this world leading e-learning system. They are open to partners at any level of education and training. An Arizona collaboration, such as agriculture extension education, could be a starting point for Arizona involvement. At ASU, a commercial company Knowledge.Net is providing university wide Web based training in use of computers and applications. Centers of research in the application of technology to learning and training include Don Evans, ASU College of Engineer Center for Research of Education in Science, Math, Engineering and Technology and Dee Andrews at the Air Force Research Laboratory at Gateway Airpark. Cox Cable provides significant educational media in the K-12 classroom. The key to delivery is to realize it all has to be supported by a "teacher" however the e-learning trainer or teacher role evolves. Without significant investment in professional development, sub-expectation results are to be expected. Check out http://www.webcampus.co.za/ .
Revolutionalize the delivery of K-12 education: The state of Arizona has made some strides. The School Facilities Board and e-rate funding is assuring that all classrooms will be connected to broadband networks and the Internet. The number of computers will grow, but still be far short of the minimum of 1:4 modern multimedia computers per student, the most appropriate current software and media, and continuous well funding teacher professional development. The State is far short of a supporting system to transform teaching and learning in the classroom to take full advantage of the potential of e-learning, although ASSET is a good resource and start in the right direction. Needed is an e-learning professional development system that can provide at least two weeks a year to 50,000 teachers and key staff personnel. The current graduate system is hard pressed to provide this caliber of education to 1500 let alone 50,000. Arizona could invest and become a player with the federal Advance Distributed Learning System with a focus on teach professional development in the art of using technology to support learning. On a micro scale the team of a teacher, knowledge expert, knowledge technician and ADLS e-learning authoring and delivery tools could provide income and high levels of job satisfaction for Arizona teachers. Transform the lifelong learning process for adults: Knowledge that is "needed to be known" for success in life is rapidly changing. One study shows 7 times in the 18-year span to high school graduation. Schools must now teach the use of the emerging technology based learning tools. Intelligent tutoring, simulation, exploratory, just-in-time learning can be delivered by e-learning. With the need and desire to know will drive a much greater part of our life. Learning will shift from baseball style (highly structured, lots of records, only three of 18 players engaged at any one time, and a pastime) to a golf – basketball style (individual or small team collaborative learning). Stimulate creation of a statewide electronic learning infrastructure that is accessible to all Arizonans in their homes, schools or community centers: Oris and Mark are on the Arizona Department of Transportation Shared Resource Commission. There are trades being made between access vs. long haul. Base on the Arizona highway grid and corridors, it could reach many rural communities. There is a need for a system of advocates. Every community has a library. The librarian network could be an asset in this area. The library EDIC Center could be a focal point for this next level of economic development and rural communities. A statewide video conference network, with nodes at every library could be a major asset. Use e-learning as a catalyst to achieve specific learning objectives: There are a number of examples. Cisco has their academies in high schools. The Challenger centers are multipurpose with business-government-education collaboration. Intel is providing K-18 support in the Chandler area on becoming skilled and high paid technology workers and professionals. But this type of interaction and focus must be statewide into all schools, at all levels. The final result is based on the local governance and financial resources of the school, college and training program. Use e-learning to help create new learning environments and teams Must be under education umbrella. Is it censored? Is it commercial? Who is securing it? Create a new intermediary in the e-learning marketplace Cox has Channel-One which is an innovation in the classroom, but provides a captive audience to advertising. Become a national test-bed for the latest innovations Setup an intermediary, a broker to provide knowledgeable users with interface to software developers for beta testing. ASSET and Regional training centers could have roles. Universities and schools should step-up to this using the model from the medical industry. Medical school based research hospitals providing test settings for development of drugs, devices and procedures by pharmaceutical companies. The research of Oris Friesen and Forouzan Golshani on knowledge systems is a good example. This development research would cover the spectrum of life span learning. Almost all the colleges in our universities, community colleges and private colleges could have a role. Research could be play between national and state standards, and innovative creativity. Arizona education and training providers would profit from being on the cutting edge of research. The medical model clearly shows that research hospitals have the best patient outcomes. Should Arizona schools ignore this opportunity? Group was a bit played out, and no breakthroughs came to the fore. The current membership was reviewed. A number of very talented people not on the list are indicating they will be involved and are being added to the list. The August 14th meeting will show who will "vote with their feet" and show up to participate. Julia North will brief the co-chair Greg Holmes who heads up her company, Cox. I will give Roy Herberger a call to let him know what we are up to as well as John Melville, the lead consultant. Like the successful GSPED Optics and Software clusters, the time may be right for GSPED to support the formation of a Learning Technology Cluster. The learning technology industry is only a few $billion at this time but is expected to grow into $10’s of billions within the next 10 to 20 years. Soon we will be over with our fixation with telecom infrastructure and be ready to deliver effective instruction and content. Arizona has many small companies, several university and federal/military research programs and laboratories, a large statewide customers, many years of public policy development, large technology companies, and others with a vested interest in the success of learning technology. Three years ago the Air Force Research Lab at Gateway Airpark sponsored a daylong meeting of for this set of learning technology stakeholders and over 40 people participated. With ten years of civic entrepreneurship experience the Learning Technology Cluster group could be effectively designed and launched. It could be the lead cluster in this emerging industry, like San Diego jumped on Biotech and Tucson on Optics. Carpe Diem!
K-12 EDUCATION SOFTWARE STANDARDS Eighty makers of educational software are working to develop uniform standards -- Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF) -- so their programs will work with each other. "The real first benefit is better productivity of people time," said Patrick Plant, technology director for the Anoka-Hennepin School District near Minneapolis, who has been testing the new software. "The second benefit is better information being immediately available." The new standards, which were developed by the software companies and educators, will allow schools to link together the separate programs that run various functions, including the library's checkout system, the school's front office, and the cafeteria and transportation systems. Instead of school personnel typing in student data in each one of these departments, the information would be entered once, and then sent electronically to the other departments, even if they use different hardware and software. "What we're hearing form school districts is that they'd like to pick the best of software packages and share information among them," said Sue Kamp, acting director of the SIF project and director of education and market initiatives for the Software Information Industry Association, a trade group. "They were getting tired of putting in the name for the 1,400th time for each student." [SOURCE: CyberTimes, AUTHOR: Rebecca Weiner (rweiner@nytimes.com)] [Well that was disappointment. I first thought they might be addressing student learning support software. Ted the Ed.]
NEW SURVEY LAUDS MIDWESTERN STATES FOR USE OF TECHNOLOGY IN SCHOOLS Market Data Retrieval, an educational research company, surveyed 30,000 public and private schools to create the "Technology Sophistication Index." The index gauges a school's "technology sophistication" on several factors that included its type of computer networking, its Internet connection speed, how many high-end and multimedia computers a school had, the location of the computers and the number of computers per student. Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota and several other largely rural Midwestern states were rated among the top 10 in the nation in terms of technology sophistication. "Smaller communities aren't overwhelmed," said Wayne Fisher, Internet program specialist for the Nebraska Department of Education's Education Technology Center. "Many of our K-12 schools have less than 1,000 students and many have less than 500. When you start about the task of connecting everyone, you can do it in a bite-sized chunk." The other states ranked in the top ten were Alaska, Wyoming, Delaware, Idaho, Montana, Kansas and Iowa. School size contributed significantly to the states' successful efforts, but so did coordinated technology planning by lawmakers and teachers. [SOURCE: CyberTimes, AUTHOR: Rebecca Weiner (rweiner@nytimes.com)] (http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/07/cyber/education/26education.html) [ It will be great when we get to the point of studying actual student achievement, level of teacher professional development, effective plans, curriculum integration, instead of just counting boxes. But boxes are a start. Ted the Ed.]
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