ALTP News September 9, 2000
Edited by Richard Brincefield

Recent ALTP News

Reminder: ALTP BOARD OF DIRECTORS MEETING (OPEN)

Wednesday, September 20, 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,  September 9, 2000

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

ACTION

THE E-LEARNING HOT TEAM FORUM

CUTOFF IS SEPTEMBER 19^th

IDEA’s AND CRITIQUE NEEDED THIS WEEK.

Over the next 6 days, the Breakthrough Ideas of the E-Learning Hot Team will be formulated. If you are on the team, then sign in at http://www.rfpforum.com/ and provide your wisest comments. If not, then email your E-Learning comments to tkraver@qwest.net and I will try to get them posted into correct section of the discussion.

MEETING NOTICE

US WEST => QUEST is working on setting up our video conferenced board meeting for 7:30 to 9:30, September 20^th, 2000, but with the merger and changes has not yet confirmed. We wanted to have a working meeting prior to the open E-Learning Hot Team meeting:

Meeting #2: September 21, 1:00 - 4:00 PM
ASU Downtown Center, Room 356
502 E Monroe, Phoenix

Be sure to attend this the Hot Team meeting and provide your input. The Hot Team especially needs input from K-12 educators. I will let you know if and when we pull it off our meeting.

ADL: SITUATION-OPPORTUNITY

I attended the Advanced Distributed Learning initiative meeting last week in Orlando. The ADL is the center for a massive 3-year, ongoing $100’s of millions of federal E-Learning effort. The world is focusing on E-Learning as a hardware, software, bandwidth, and learning technology opportunity. "Install it and they will learn" is paying significant dividends. But almost no one is addressing the human side; the teacher-trainer-professor who is vital to make all this shinny new technology truly effective. Sure, these professionals are trained to use the hardware and software. But what they do not have access to is an E-Learning delivered continuous professional development system that educates and supports them in transforming their teaching practice to take advantage of the immense potential of E-Learning. When talking to an Air Force E-Learning research director, one of the ADL leaders, I raised this issue. I was really surprised to learn from him and many others that it is hardly being addressed. My entrepreneurial bell was rung hard. Arizona has an opportunity to capture the E-Learning education and professional development for E-Learning teaching force. These professionals represent between 5 to 10% of the U.S. work force.

Vision

Arizona Teacher-Trainer-Professor Professional Development System

Under APNE-GSPED an Arizona stakeholder coalition develops and markets globally an Arizona advanced distributed learning (AADL) system. The AADL delivers professional development for teachers, trainers, professors and self-learners (you and me) to provide effective teacher (self) support to the technology based E-Learning systems. The AADL would be the foundation for all other distributed learning systems (E-Learning systems). The AADL also provides professional development (education and training) to all other professionals that create, support, research and manage E-Learning systems: librarians, mentors, hardware/software technicians, software developers, instructional designers, knowledge and curriculum experts, researchers, and leaders. The AADL serves the 80,000 professional Arizona market and college students in the teaching/training professions in Arizona, 6 million in the U.S. and many 10’s of millions world wide.

AADL Coalition Stakeholders

Over the past 4 years ALTP has identified economic areas, clusters, organizations, associations, users and leaders that have a vested interest in E-Learning. The following list would define the coalition driving the AADL:

Businesses ( Human Resource ); Colleges/Universities; Computer Software; Dept. of Commerce; Dept. of Education; Economic Development; Emerging Technology Companies; Employees, Unions; Government Local; Government State; Governors Office; Business Associations; K-12 Districts; E-Learning Companies; E-Learning Research Organizations; Legislature; Lobbyists; Libraries; Native Americans; Non-Public Schools; Parents & Students; Professional Development and Training Organizations; and Rural Communities; School to Work; School Facilities Board; Teachers-Trainers-Professors; Educational Technology Directors; and Telecommunication Providers

Teacher-trainer-professor and staff professional development curriculum framework was developed last fall by ASSET within an ALTP committee. The following is a based on this work:

1. Basic Technical: Use and run computers, enhance professional development and communication, apply computers to support instruction.
2. Advanced Technical Knowledge and Support: Apply concepts and skills, integrate productivity tools to support instruction, use telecommunications to support instruction, use presentation, multimedia and authoring packages to support instruction.
3. Fundamentals: Apply educational computing and technology literacy skills across the curriculum, initiation transformation of practice toward facilitation, student planning, coaching and counseling.
4. Integration: Use educational technology research, psychology of learning, and instructional design principles, evaluate multimedia instructional products including intelligent agents and tutors, virtual reality and simulation for implementation, use collaborative – small group, forum, e-mail, Web-Internet distance learning, and automated assessment within learning management systems, use advance authoring systems in specialty areas, mentor other teachers.
5. Leadership: Participate in curriculum development and strategic technology planning, provide input to standards development, deliver staff professional development, understand local, global and long range issues of emerging research based learning technology, evaluate technology for adoption, participate in research and development projects, participate in development of commercial and shared products.

AADL DESIGN CONCEPT

There are many ways could design a collaborative system AADL system. Educational institutions and companies both within and outside of Arizona will continue to offer an array of options from traditional classes to Web based programs. Arizona could just create a clearing house and funding, and guide each professional or student to an offering that serves her need. But it is highly probable that this piecemeal approach would result in higher costs, variable quality and serious gaps in accessibility and coverage. It would also ignore the opportunity of creating a comprehensive solution and the competitive advantage this focused system would deliver of Arizona’s economy.

It is my conjecture that Arizona needs to take GSPED economic cluster implementation to the next level. The emerging E-Learning education-training market is unique with its multiple public-private stakeholders. An organized coalition lead collaboration to capture the center of the businesses, training organizations, schools and colleges is possible.

Example Physical Concept: The E-Learning system would be a network with a central index and distributed repositories. The system would be built within the many current and emerging broadband telecommunication networks within Arizona. A scaleable learning management system (LSM) would originally be setup to serve Arizona’s 80,000 teaching professionals. The LSM could support video presentation, multimedia classroom, desktop video conferencing, Web based instruction and interactive distance learning. It would also automate the administration including student tracking, assessment and credentialing. A number of special applications would implemented over the AADL LSM: community-building, course-building authoring tools, smart agents, intelligent tutors, specific simulations, student-peer-teacher communications. Each unit of curriculum would have, at a minimum, Web based delivery. Although the major focus will be on distributed learning, where appropriate traditional classes would be part of the system.

System Operation Concept: The AADL LSM would be managed by a company or agency that reports to the collation board. This board represents the stakeholder group listed above. The evolving curriculum would specify course or learning objects to be delivered by courseware, CDROM and/or video. These course and learning objects will be federal ADL (SCORM) compliant which will enhance delivery to federal agency and military market, and in the longer range, U.S. and global markets. Coalition members with leading expertise will develop/provide the courseware. They or others will deliver the staff resources required for distance or in-class learning. Superior learning objects that exist outside Arizona will be acquired if development is not cost, time or expertise effective. Each segment of the education and training industry in Arizona will have the opportunity to deliver courses within AADL-LMS.

Tradition industry costs for professional development of this level is in the range of $2000 per person per year. Assuming the AADL will have major cost savings, the cost estimate might be $1000. The potential of $80 million public and private sector revenues would be a significant stimulus to quickly grow the AADL-LMS with the highest quality courseware and staff.

ONLINE LEARNING PICKS UP PACE

Florida High School (FHS), a virtual school, offers online curriculum to its students as well as 37 ninth-graders participating from Daniel Jenkins Academy in Haines City, Fla. The program combines the social and extracurricular activities of traditional high school with online curriculum. Students come to Jenkins daily, where they spend much of their time together in a classroom/lab with two facilitators. Jenkins students are bused to nearby Haines City High School, where they take part in sports, music, drama and other club activities. FHS courses include a two or three hour online orientation that must be completed before students can gain access to courses. Some classes also offer an initial unit designed to help students adapt to their self-paced education curriculum.

[SOURCE: USAToday (11D), AUTHOR: Karen Thomas]

(http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20000907/2620126s.htm)

TEACHERS GET A TASTE OF HIGH-TECH WORLD

A Bay Area program, IISME (Industry Initiatives for Science and Math Education), gives classroom teachers the opportunity to experience day-to-day work in the tech industry. IISME places teachers in summer jobs in Silicon Valley, where they can see the real world applications of the skills and subject matter they teach. Participants of this summer's program said ONE THING THEY LEARNED WAS THAT HIGH-TECH WORKERS ARE GIVEN THE TOOLS, TRAINING AND SUPPORT NEEDED TO DO THEIR JOBS. (quaint notion. Ted the Ed.) Many were also impressed by the corporate collaboration they witnessed at Silicon Valley workplaces. "You meet together and talk about the goal. Then everyone goes to their cubicle to do their part. It's like a jigsaw puzzle. If you don't have your piece done on time."

[SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News, AUTHOR: Joanne Jacobs]

(http://www.mercurycenter.com/svtech/columns/front/docs/jj090700.htm)

WISDOM IN SMALL BYTES:

It is not the facts that are of chief importance, but the light thrown upon them, the meaning in which they are dressed, the conclusions, which are drawn from them, and the judgments delivered upon them.

-- Mark Twain

...the more original a discovery the more obvious it seems afterwards.

-- Arthur Koestler

Wisdom is the daughter of experience.

-- Leonardo da Vinci

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".