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ALTP News August
5, 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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| 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, August 5, 2000Arizona Learning Technology Partnership, Inc.
Two important meetings for ALTP associates in their support of the Arizona Partnership for the New Economy. Next Monday from 1:00 to 4:00 in the E-learning Hot team meeting or for North Country folks, how about spending a day in Flagstaff this Friday for APNE Task Force meeting and Rural Town Hall: APNE E-LEARNING HOT TEAM MEETING (FIRST) Monday, August 14, 2000, from 1:00-4:00 pm World Business Building, Room 236 at Thunderbird (AGSIM) 15249 N. 59th Avenue, Glendale, AZ. E- Learning and New Talent Hot Team: Roy Herberger of the American Graduate School of International Management and Gregg Holmes of Cox Cable Arizona will co-chair this team focused on seeking opportunities to make E-learning pervasive in Arizona's schools, workplaces, homes, and communities. If you would like to attend this meeting, please send an email to the appropriate link below and include your name, company, address, phone and FAX numbers. E-Learning Hot Team: mailto: E-Learning@azcommerce.com http://www.azcommerce.com/neweconomy/hotteaminfo.htm. To contribute to the E-Learning Hot Team, contact Craig Sullivan: craigs@azcommerce.com or 602-280-1343. APNE Project Manager Arizona Department of Commerce
APNE: TASK FORCE MEETING AND RURAL TOWN HALL Arizona Partnership for the New Economy (APNE) will meet in Flagstaff, Arizona on Friday, August 11, 2000. The meeting will be held in the Ashurst Building on the campus of Northern Arizona University (NAU) from 10:30 AM to 1:30 PM.
The consulting team will provide an update on the activities of the Hot Teams, including recent meetings of the "E-Government" and "Building Connections to Opportunities" teams. They will also provide an update on the innovative assessment tool under development to assist Arizona communities, organizations and business in determining their position in the New Economy. We request that you RSVP by Monday, August 7th. Call Cindy Grogan at (602) 280-1330 or click on the following link: mailto:cindyg@azcommerce.com? SUBJECT=RSVP_for_8/11_APNE_meeting The APNE meeting will be followed by a "Rural Town Hall," a live, interactive videoconference broadcast via NAUnet to 22 cities throughout Arizona. The videoconference is scheduled from 2:30 to 4:00 PM on Friday, August 11. The public is welcome and encouraged to participate in the discussion. A list of locations and more details are available at http://www.azcommerce.com/neweconomy/August2000RuralVCInfo.htm .
STATES EXPANDING INFRASTRUCTURE AND ACCESS TO E-LEARNING: ORIS FREISEN – ATIC CHAIRMAN Broadband telecommunication access is a necessary foundation and it is well on the way to be being implemented in major metro areas. The John Badal study 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. Here is a brief synopsis/generalization of some of the main points made in the Badal paper. Many of Arizona's rural communities (e.g., Globe, Tombstone, Bisbee, Wickenburg, Gila Bend et al.) are lacking a telecommunications Central Office (CO). This condemns these communities to a substandard telecommunications future. To be effective, Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) service, needed for high-speed Internet usage over existing telephone copper wires, requires a CO within a three mile range. Total wireless systems, such as cellular networks, are still dependent on a sound local public telephone network, which includes adequate cabling, loops and a CO. Even Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) satellite systems become more expensive if they must bypass the local telephone exchange. Fiber optic cabling, needed for high-speed cable modem service, is very expensive to place into these communities. Until these infrastructure needs are seriously confronted and met, high-speed broadband access to rural schools in Arizona will remain an unfulfilled dream.
COX COMMUNICATIONS AND HORIZON COMMUNITY LEARNING CENTER Cox Communications is the exclusive communications provider to the Horizon Community Learning Center in Phoenix. Cox has donated more than $120,000 in fiber optic connectivity to the facility, and is the exclusive provider of video, telephone and high-speed Internet services to the facility. http://aspin.asu.edu/horizon/ The Horizon Community Learning Center features state-of-the-art facilities, including computer labs, meeting rooms, a research library and a recreational area for residents of the local community. Horizon Charter School will also provide tuition-free education for students in grades K-12. The facility is Cox's first model technology school in Arizona. Julia North, Education Technology Specialist; Cox Communications, Inc. Phone: 623-322-8039; Fax: 623-322-7424; Cell: 602-332-4307 POINT-COUNTER POINT BUD ELDON COMMENTS: ALTP BOARD MEMBER FROM SIERRA VISTA I strongly recommend to you a relatively new book that I just finished: "The Conspiracy of Ignorance". My conclusion from reading it is that perhaps we're "beating a dead horse" or in related ways missing a truly significant problem, which is the lack of education and innate ability of a significant percentage of our teacher population. In particular there is an appalling shortage of teachers trained in science or math. The obvious question is: what would we accomplish (at least in science and math education) if we get all kids connected to the Internet, but have teachers who don't understand the material that the kids see, can't understand how to use the Internet to enhance their curricula, and whose SAT and GRE scores are the lowest among all professions? The solution is to attract the brightness students to become teachers and administrators, focus on subject matter in their education college, and reengineer schools to remove excessive overhead and constraints that do not contribute to teachers teaching and students learning. Any counter arguments? How we should accomplish this?
Send them to Ted the Ed at tkraver@qwest.net. ONEWORLD LAUNCHES DIGITAL DIVIDE CAMPAIGN OneWorld, the organization behind the world's leading portal on the Web for human rights and sustainable development, has launched an online campaign on the global digital divide www.oneworld.net/campaigns/digitaldivide . Communications technologies are playing an increasingly important role in economic development, education, health and governance. The exclusion of billions who are poor, illiterate, rural or non-English speaking from the evolving global information infrastructure has serious effects. The rights to be informed and to the means to communicate enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights should be protected and extended with the Internet. The challenge is to ensure that both the growing worldwide digital divide and initiatives to address it do not compound the existing gap between rich and poor." OneWorld's online partnership includes over 700 NGOs and international organizations such as UN agencies. Glen Tarman, +44 (0)1494 481629 E media@oneworld.net. OneWorld is a non-profit network that aims to harness the democratic potential of the Internet to promote sustainable development and human rights. Its supersite, www.OneWorld.net, is the world's leading portal on global justice and a gateway to over 700 NGOs worldwide.
NEAL PEIRCE => "E-GOVERNMENT": NOT JUST CONVENIENCE Neal is a national writer and has written pieces in the past that have had a significant influence on our out look on economic development. Electronic government, so far, has been sold to citizens by its convenience. But couldn't e-technology make it more responsive, even for people with little wealth or influence? Web-generated convenience can be terrific. A business permit, to pay taxes, or to renew a driver's license, should be done on-line and in a couple of minutes. In central Arizona, click onto Phoenix At Your Fingertips and you need only type in "barking dog," "library hours" or "violent spouse" to be whisked, electronically and instantly, to the right local government office. The site is getting a quarter million hits each month. Its impact will ultimately rival Gutenberg's printing press in the kind of dramatic impact it will have on education, the economy and democracy. Arizona Secretary of State Betsey Bayless says the benefits only start when citizens express pleasure with online, speeded-up code searches, business filings, and instant information on lobbyist registrations and campaign spending reports. The very process of applying information technology, Bayless says, reveals how slow and inefficient many government functions have been. Organizing for e-government points the way to multiple reinvention strategies. Citizens should personalize their questions and requests -- and officials to monitor queries and tailor more responsive answers. Instead of simply following rulebooks, government workers will have to be granted discretion and flexibility to respond to citizens' highly individual queries and requests. Advocates of e-government see computer-based technology that enables government officials to measure actual results of alternative policies and adjust their approaches continuously. [What a marvelous idea.] The weak link in that chain may be "citizen-driven" -- We don't yet have a surge of popular demand for e-government. But the more the word gets out, the more citizens will demand nothing else and nothing less. [The word is struggling just as hard to get out in K-12 education technology. Me thinks we need to keep helping it along. Ted the Ed.]
HANDHELD COMPUTER PRODUCERS TURN TO SCHOOLS AS NEW MARKET Handheld computer manufactures are rushing to get Palm-style machines into schools and make them the dominant ed tech tool. The strategy is to give them to teachers and administrators and sell them to students. There are 68.1 million students enrolled K-12 through universities. There are about 80 million consumers in the mobile work force, so the education market is almost as large. says Mike Lorion, Palm's VP of Education. They sell for $150 to $450 and are more affordable than personal computers. Some question student's privacy, security and authentication. Since most handheld devices now have an infrared capability where a student might easily beam his test answers or essays to a group of his pals. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Pui-Wing Tam (pui-wing.tam@wsj.com)] (http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB965169335851601846.htm)
WISH TV: A WISH COME TRUE FOR SCHOOLS AND STUDENTS? BY ANDY CARVIN WISH TV, which stands for WorldGate Internet School to Home Television, is a set-top box that allows users to connect to the Internet by means of their television and cable service. Starting this fall, WISH TV will be provided for free to over 1,500 fourth grade students and their schools in Ohio, Louisiana, Connecticut and Illinois. WISH TV offers users a chance to go online without having to buy a fully equipped PC. But will hidden costs and limited software make them less palatable to schools and families? Unlike WebTV, which uses telephone lines for Internet connectivity, WISH TV offers Internet access at higher connection rates because it employs cable lines. The set-top devices would be donated to schools and students by Motorola and Scientific Atlanta, while local cable operators would supply connectivity. The WISH TV device, despite its high-speed Internet access, does not offer the functionality to run normal educational software packages. Earlier this year, Larry Ellison of Oracle Corporation founded the New Internet Computer Company, which to date has given away over 2,000 of its New Internet Computers (NIC) to schools in Dallas and Chicago. [Richard Brincefield, publisher of this Action Agenda just got his, and is ecstatic.] Unlike WISH TV boxes, NICs have significantly lower monthly access costs because they can connect to the Internet through an ISP and their current telephone line. But they are slower. These devices are all well and good but until educational multimedia developers create a significant quantity and quality of curricular resources for set-top boxes and thin-client PCs, learning enhancement will continue to lag. WISH TV would truly bridge the digital divide in low-income communities. Not every household has the means to invest in a full-fledged PC; low-cost Internet devices fill a significant niche by providing basic Internet access at reasonable rates. The problem is the availability of quality content at a affordable price and low cost cable access. Related Websites: WorldGate http://www.wgate.com Center for Commercial-Free Public Education http://www.commercialfree.org WebTV http://www.webtv.com NetForAll http://www.netforalltv.net/ I-Opener http://www.i-opener.com New Internet Computer Company http://www.thinknic.com/ NetZero http://www.netzero.com High School for Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice http://www.houstonisd.org/LECJ/ St. Clare Walker Middle School http://seahawk.scwms.mcps.k12.va.us
WISDOM IN A FEW WORDS Genius is a promontory jutting out into the future. -- Victor Hugo
There is no slavery but ignorance.
Note: All above reports were edited or paraphrased
to shorten them to this newsletter format. Ted the Ed. The ALTP News/Action Agenda is produced by the Arizona Learning Technology To subscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ASUVM.INRE.ASU.EDU with the message To sign off the list, send email to LISTSERV@ASUVM.INRE.ASU.EDU with the
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