The California Heritage Project co-hosts Digital Curriculum Expo

On Monday, June 18, at the Zeum in San Francisco's Yerba Buena Gardens, a Digital Curriculum Expo for K-12 Digital Library Fellows and interested teachers around the Bay Area, was hosted by IU's California Heritage Project and the Bay Area National Digital Library (BANDAL). More than 100 participant attendees at the all day event were able to meet and converse, share experiences, and, from the presentations, learn how teacher and school librarian teams have created digital curriculum components for K-12 students from Internet-based digital libraries.

Kathleen Ferenz, BANDAL Project Director, and Lynn Jones, California Heritage Project Director, kicked off the morning with a formal presentation of project research. Dr. Larry Cuban, Stanford University Professor of Education, followed with a talk in which he spoke about his 5 decade career of education research--focussing on curriculum, technology and teacher collaboration. Cuban detailed some of the specific challenges confronted when institutional change is attempted in schools and K-12 education. He noted that while 8 in 10 teachers are now serious computer users at home, only about 2 in 10 apply their full interest or expertise to classroom issues. The Expo provided many examples of ways in which teachers and librarians have teamed up to make innovative, new technologies, and methods of creating with them, applicable in the classroom. In addition, the day contained a number of "inquiry sessions" in which participants and presenters engaged in guided professional dialogue--commenting on challenges, common experiences, and some of the successes represented in the Expo.

At the BANDL site you can see the day's agenda, and, in the Gallery Walk that showcases best practices, access links to the some of the same learning materials presented on June 18, while you browse through a number of interesting and related sites.

The Bay Area National Digital Library is a research and development project sponsored by the Bay Area School Reform Collaborative. BANDL participants work to make real some of the high expectations for how technology might improve K-12 education in support of reform work. BANDL participant schools have worked in curriculum design teams to identify questions at the core of their project:

• In what ways does new technology change the roles of teacher and learner?
• How can we best use Internet material in support of learning?
• How do we align what is actually taught in the classroom to standards?
• How will we overcome teacher isolation and improve teacher quality?

Through its work, the BANDL project has developed a set of tools--the same set used to create the learning materials presented at the Expo--for furthering inquiry-oriented curriculum design and a professional community. They include:

• A curriculum design template
• Curriculum maps used to align standards, assessments, and learning experiences
• A protocol for looking at student work
• Library pathfinders used to organize digital instructional material
• A coaching system and tools to support results-based team development.

For a more information about BASRC, BANDL, K-12 Digital Library Fellows, the California Heritage Project, and much more, check out a copy of the Zeum Expo program guide (in PDF format) on the BANDL site.

Two CityBugs Spring 2001 Activities: UC Students Teach Kids; Contest Winners Tour Berkeley Campus

In spring 2001 City Bugs conducted two new activities described on their website under the "special projects" button.

First, the CityBugs project formed a 2-credit semester long course in which UC students (both undergraduate and graduate) design and teach lessons/activities to kids about insects and environmental education. The four students in the course, ESPM 198-298, made it a great success in its first offering. They worked with teachers in a number of Oakland K-12 schools, observing the classroom techniques and the children. They also helped research, design and teach lessons and activities.

In April, students in participating CityBugs classrooms were invited to take an online quiz to test their knowledge of bugs. The contest ran for three weeks, during which time students could research and submit answers to the 10 quiz questions at an interactive web-page on the CityBugs site. Students who answered all 10 questions correctly were eligible to win a trip to the Berkeley campus where they collected specimens near Strawberry Creek and visited labs at the College of Natural Resources. Click here for pictures of the students' day on campus.

IU Honored As "Outstanding Example" of Project Evaluation by U.S. Department of Commerce

The United States Department of Commerce Technology Opportunities Program (TOP) recently announced the Interactive University Project's Phase One Evaluation Report has been selected as "an outstanding" example of project evaluation. In a letter to IU Director David Greenbaum, Stephen J. Downs, Director of TOP, states in part, "Your evaluation report has been selected as an outstanding example of an evaluation report. As you are aware, one of the Technology Opportunities Program's responsibilities is to disseminate the results and insights learned from its projects through publications, newsletters and online resources. As one of our exemplary projects we wish to make your work available as an example of how to design, conduct, and report a project evaluation." You can read the entire report, and an accompanying "case study"; (conducted and written for TOP by WESTAT) at the TOP site. Or go to the Evaluation page from the navigation bar on this page and find both TOP sites linked there.

The IU report, submitted in December 1998 to cover the period from October 1996 through September 1998, was co-authored by Lisa Kala, UCB Graduate School of Education, and Isabel Hawkins, IU Project and Space Sciences Laboratory. The report outlines the challenges and opportunities facing Berkeley and Bay Area K-12 educational communities in the late 1990's, and explains the incipient IU vision to harness Internet and Education technologies in collaborative frameworks and strong University/K-12 relationships to support systemic change for improved student outcomes at all levels.

In 1996 the IU received a substantial grant from TOP (at that time called TIIAP--Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program) that enabled the groundwork pilot projects of Phase One to move ahead with adequate support and funding. TOP requires all grant recipients to conduct evaluations of their projects. These reports from the field, based on project goals and objectives, are expected to aid in self-monitoring and support course corrections, assessment of short-term impacts, and development of indicators of long-range impact. In addition, individual project evaluations provide TOP with information for its own program planning and design.

Links to IU's summer 2001 Teacher Professional Development Workshops and Seminars

The summer season of Teacher Professional Development Workshops and Seminars for IU Projects continues. Over the past several summers, Internet Learning Community Projects have conducted programs and workshops around the Bay Area and on the Berkeley Campus--ranging from one day "hands on" learning and dialogue sessions for teacher professional development, to the "Summer Step Up" for thousands of San Francisco middle-school students and their teachers. This year is no exception. Below are links to the currently announced programs for summer 2001. If you have a program in your project, or know of one that should be listed here, let us know and we will post it! Thanks.

(Note: this list was first published on June 3, and some programs may have passed, or now be closed to applicants.)

• The Bay Area Writing Project features summer programs for teachers and young writers grades 4-8. Check out their offerings and schedules here.
• The Office of Resources for International and Area Studies (ORIAS) will offer a summer institute for K-5 teachers and librarians entitled "Cultural Representations in Children's Literature" from July 30 to Aug 3, 2001. Find out more.
• Connecting Students to the World offers a workshop for high school teachers in history and the humanities on August 15 and 16. View a PDF version of the application.

Fundraising: A Challenge for the University of California, and all of Higher Education

Facing the reality of intense competition for funds, and a long list of worthy, but underfunded public programs that compete for funding, institutions of higher learning, and the departments and programs that constitute a research university, are confronting a world of change as University academic and administrative personnel look for ways to maintain or expand their educational, research, and outreach objectives.

In two different but related pieces below, these issues are addressed. The first, about the influence of corporate donors, appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, and was reported by students at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and edited by The Chronicle. Part of the story is based on a student-conducted survey of fund raising by departments in 11 academic areas at the eight University of California campuses with undergraduate programs. The second piece appeared as a "first person" editorial in the New York Times, and is one person's report of his experience attempting to be "non-profit" on the World Wide Web.

• Corporate Donors' Influence Spilling into UC Classrooms: a report from the University of California by Berkeley journalism graduate students
• Serfs on the Web: An NYT editorial about maintaining a non-profit website.

For the archive of IU News Issues from the year 2000, click here.