First organized in 1995, the IU is now engaged in a third phase of work that continues to bring together campus academic and outreach units in partnerships with K-12 teachers, schools, and community groups in San Francisco, Oakland, the Bay Area, and beyond.

The IU is working to open the resources of UC Berkeley to Internet users, and aims to create model partnerships and projects that offer learning materials to California's K-12 schools, and to educational institutions and communities anywhere.

Current IU projects have grown out of eight years of partnerships, field work, and research and development. IU's goals and vision have evolved in response to partner needs, lessons learned, and changes in information and education technologies. For information about earlier projects go to Past IU Projects below.

At the core of current IU work is the Scholar's Box: a tool that will enable faculty, teachers, students, and the public to create, manipulate, annotate, and share personal collections of digital materials gathered from multiple sources and repositories — core activities in both scholarship and teaching. Building the Scholar's Box informs all current IU endeavors.

The IU also works in several continuing and emerging projects; they complement, and in some cases implement, Scholar's Box development; they support access to, and utilization of, online tools and resources. IU projects target educators, students, and researchers, while creating archives and making new resources accessible to strengthen classrooms and communities. In addition to Scholar's Box development work, current IU projects, by starting date, beginning with most recent :

2004
• American West Project: (beginning 2004) The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation recently announced a substantial grant to the University of California to develop online tools that permit broader access to the world's leading libraries and other cultural institutions. The Hewlett grant funds a proposal, New Frontiers in the Digital Library: Social and Ecological Diversity of the American West, submitted last summer by UC's California Digital Library (CDL).  In the New Frontiers project, the IU—a strategic CDL partner—will receive funding to develop the Scholar's Box. Read more.
  
  2003
• Andrew W. Mellon Foundation: (2003-ongoing) The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation supports the IU in software development that explores interoperability between digital libraries and educational technologies—specifically, how educational technology applications can be developed in collaboration with the Mellon supported Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI).
• California Digital Library: (2003-ongoing) The California Digital Library (CDL)—the 11th university library of the University of California—and the IU established a strategic partnership in 2003. The CDL and the IU are testing and developing ways for educational technologies to make the library's resources more accessible to all its audiences—including current and potential users in K-12 communities. Read more.
• City|Watershed Project (2003-2006) The Department of Commerce Technology Opportunities Program (TOP) supports the IU with a major grant to develop and administer the City Watershed Project. City Watershed is comprised of more than a dozen partner organizations in San Francisco and the East Bay. The project will strengthen the established, successful watershed education and restoration programs of its partners with innovative computer technologies; City Watershed's goal is to increase community involvement in, and understanding of, the urban watershed so that citizens can participate in solving the interrelated environmental and social problems affecting the San Francisco Bay Area’s watersheds. Read more.
  
  2002
• EDGE Project (2002-2004) Eastmont Digital Griots Enroute (EDGE) at Oakland's Eastmont Mall began as a partnership of UC Berkeley's Institute of Urban and Regional Development and the Eastmont Computing Center with grant support from the Community Educational Resource Center. IU joined this award-winning project in summer 2002 to assist a workshop for high school students that prepared them to write a personal essay for college and UC admission application. Read more.
  
  1999
• Urban Dreams (1999-2004) at Oakland Unified School District. Urban Dreams Technology Innovation Challenge Grant is a project of the Oakland Unified School District’s Office of Instructional Technology. Funded by a five-year U.S. Department of Education Grant, IU works with the project to support high-school History and English teachers by providing access to appropriate technology tools and professional development opportunities.  Read more here and here.
• Urban Systemic Program (1999-2004) workshops, professional development for teachers, and other activities at San Francisco Unified School District. Read more.
• Y-PLAN (2000-2004) The award winning Y-PLAN Project has worked with high school students in West Oakland for the past three years, providing them with opportunities to participate in, and understand, urban planning and design. Each year the project's focus changes—responding to redevelopment needs within the community. Next year the Y-PLAN will take parts of its program to San Francisco Unified Schools, when it will integrate community research and social action/enterprise into SFUSD career academy development. Read more.

Past IU Projects

In its first two phases, IU was able to support more than 30 specific projects. Each of these projects provided a bridge between work and interests on the Berkeley campus, and work and interests in a Bay Area K-12 school setting. Projects focussed on a range of academic fields and were geared to teachers and students at all K-12 levels.

View Phase Two Projects

View Phase One Projects