Here's the August 2003 issue of the IU News. Welcome. Things slow down in summer, but this month's news contains a number of interesting reports and updates. The lead story covers the inaugural UC College Prep Summer Institute (UCCP). Attended by more than one hundred educators and UC representatives, including four IU staff members. The conference was held at UC Santa Cruz in mid-July. The theme was Bringing Classrooms into the 21st Century. You can read about the conference offerings and UCCP below. The rest of the issue includes information about new digital learning materials posted by CLAS and stories about online museums and libraries: a redesigned museum website from the BAM/PFA, an award winning online exhibition from the Bancroft Library, and a children's digital library containing books from around the world in several languages. There is also an update on the California state budget crisis and its impact on UC and UC outreach programs. The lead story is introduced on the IU Main page and printed in full below. Stories featured in this issue are:
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University of California College Prep Initiative @ UCSC
Under the theme, Bringing Classrooms into the 21st Century, the inaugural UC College Prep Summer Institute, held July 16-18, 2003 at the UC Santa Cruz Inn and Conference Center, provided practical training for all secondary level educators interested in the effective use of technology to increase academic access and achievement. From mentoring students to online teaching, from websites to networks, the workshops covered essential elements of an infrastructure that supports the integration of online teaching and learning into a single classroom or a school's technology plan.
More than one hundred educators and University of California representatives joined UCCP for this first-time event. In addition to keynote speaker Dr. John B. Simpson, Executive Vice Chancellor, at UC Santa Cruz, there were workshops in four separate topical threads: Teaching and Mentoring; Content and Curricula; Online Communities; Systems and Networks. A lunchtime keynote delivered by the Digital California Project's Sandra Couch and the and California State Parks' Joe von Herrmann was a particular highlight, as well as a talk about online teaching by Rosina Smith, Executive Director of the Alberta Online Consortium.
IU staff members Chris Ashley, Rick Jaffe, Isaac Mankita, and Tim Peebles were among those in attendance. The general consensus of IU attendees was quite favorable; most presentations were notable and helpful. And, as one would expect at a conference of colleagues engaged in diverse tasks that share a common goal, there was plenty of time to make contacts and introductions, followed by talk and shared experiences about digital teaching and learning.
Reflecting on the conference afterward, and comparing notes about individual conversations, and the themes and topics presented in the workshops, IU staff were encouraged to discover how many IU strategies and goals are being validated by the work and perspectives of the presenters and the reflections of the teachers. This was not a big surprise, since the IU has always had partnerships at the core of its plans and projects; partnerships that solicit and honor the experiences and insights of communities of K-12 educators, and University faculty, students and staff.
The Santa Cruz Summer Institute was sponsored by the UC College Prep Initiative (UCCP), and is a key part of their teacher professional development effort. UCCP's mission is to provide online college preparatory courses to high school students who otherwise would not have the opportunity to achieve eligibility or competitive eligibility for admission to the University of California and other top universities. UCCP develops media rich online college preparatory courses that are designed for Internet 2, are aligned to California content standards, and fulfill admission requirements to the University of California. A University of California academic initiative, UCCP also provides online content, test prep and academic support free of charge to students and teachers from eligible schools.
As noted in introductory materials prepared by UCCP, the barrier of access to higher education for all students in the state of California presents a critical challenge. Resources and courses are not equitably distributed among the school districts across the state. Rural and intercity schools often lack either the ability to recruit qualified teachers or the resources necessary to provide adequate college preparatory courses. However with the technology currently available, it is possible to provide students in even the most remote locations with high quality Advanced Placement (AP), Honors, and other college preparatory courses. Distance learning technologies allow students to pursue the courses that interest them without limitations imposed by class size requirements or lack of qualified staff.
A final note on UCCP, despite the difficult times for California’s budget, and the education budget in particular, UCCP was excited to announce, and welcome, the arrival of new Director Moisés Torres in June of this year. You may read more about Dr. Torres at the UCCP site.
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New Digital Learning Materials from CLAS
A newly completed suite of Digital Learning Materials, produced at the Center for Latin American Studies, introduces students and learners to the history and some of the challenges surrounding the immigration of Mexicans to the United States. Entitled "MIGRATIONS: A Collection of Views on Mexican Immigration to the United States" the website outlines immigration issues along the Mexico/United States border from the Treaty of Guadalupe, in 1848, up to recent contacts between the Fox/Bush administrations.
With sections on early immigration, the Bracero Program and the United Farm Workers, as well as anti-immigrant feelings and initiatives in California, the material concludes with an analysis of the social and economic costs and benefits of immigration for both countries.
There is a rich trove of source materials (links to online archives and sites) that includes: photos, primary source documents, news articles, census data, and more. Curriculum materials and lesson plans are also included. The high school social studies standards, for 10th, 11th and 12th grades, to which the referenced materials are matched, are clearly displayed in a link to Standards.
Posing a series of research questions, and containing numerous embedded links to articles and illustrative information, the CLAS DLM site provides a comprehensive introduction to the topic of Mexican immigration to the U.S., as well as providing resources for further investigation and learning.
View the entire suite of information here.
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UK Centre Recognizes IU Scholar's Box Development Work
The July issue of the IU News noted that IU's Technology Architect, Raymond Yee, has recently made a number of presentations around the country to present and explain the plans, strategies and technologies IU employs as it builds the Scholar’s Box. When fully implemented, this web-based suite of tools will enable faculty, K-12 teachers, students, and the public to create, manipulate, annotate, save and share personal collections of digital learning and cultural material.
In late July, CETIS, The Centre for Educational Technology Interoperability Standards, recognized Yee’s work in an article at its website. The piece, entitled Transformers!, discussed the advantage of a standardized, structured data format. While citing Yee’s work with XSLT alongside that of the Digital University (DU) of the Netherlands, it makes the point that the work of Yee and the DU demonstrates that content in one standard format can, in practice, be transformed into another. This kind of transformation (interoperability) is a key area to investigate and implement for projects like the Scholar’s Box.
CETIS is funded by JISC the Joint Information Systems Committee of the Higher and Further Education Funding Councils in the U.K., and is managed by Bolton Institute, in partnership with the University of Wales, Bangor
CETIS advises Universities and Colleges on the strategic, technical and pedagogic implications of educational technology standards, and disseminates information on learning technology standards via workshops, conferences, publications and fora.
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Legislature Adopts 2003-04 Budget with Deep Cuts to UC
The 2003-04 state budget adopted by the California Legislature will lead to deep cuts in non-instructional programs at the University of California, a 30 percent student fee increase, the UC system’s first instance of borrowing to cover regular operations since the early 1990s, and a one-year delay in the opening of UC Merced. The budget also provides no state funding for salary increases for faculty and staff.
In addition, facing a $38 billion state budget deficit, the Legislature adopted language indicating that the state will not provide funding the following year – the 2004-05 fiscal year – for any student enrollment growth, employee salary increases, or other inflationary cost increases at UC.
“This is an extremely difficult budget for the University,” said UC President Richard C. Atkinson. “It is clear that the UC system will be taking major cuts that will greatly impact our ability to serve students and the state as a whole. We recognize that the challenges facing the Legislature were huge and that compromise was necessary in order to get a budget at all. But the state’s budget situation now very clearly threatens the University of California’s historic promise of access and quality.”
Among the major budget cuts are:
- Educational outreach: A reduction of $33.3 million in 2003-04. This is a 50 percent reduction in remaining state funding for UC outreach to K-12 schools and students. UC will seek ways of phasing in the cuts to help buffer the impact.
- Teacher professional development: A $15 million cut to the California Subject Matter Projects, which provide professional development for K-12 teachers in California. The cut will leave the program with $5 million in state funds, supplemented by federal funds.
- K-12 Internet: A mid-year reduction of $1.1 million grows by $6.6 million to a total cut of $7.7 million in the 2003-04 fiscal year. This reduction affects the Digital California Project, which brings the next-generation Internet2 to California public schools.
- AP Online: A $4 million mid-year reduction grows by $400,000 to a total reduction of $4.4 million in 2003-04. This cut reflects a 50 percent reduction in funding for the UC College Preparatory Initiative, which provides online Advanced Placement coursework.
More details of the UC Office of the President Press release.
The San Francisco Chronicle's story on UC and the budget from July 31, 2003.
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Redesigned (and Expanded!) Website for BAM/PFA
The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA) recently unveiled a new, redesigned website. The accessible information has increased five-fold. In addition, there are improved online resources, which makes the site on par with major U.S. museums in on-line offerings.
New features include records describing the entire BAM/PFA collection, a greatly expanded archive of film-related materials, and the largest online museum store in California, all of which provide an unparalleled resource for both public and scholarly communities. These enhancements add to the generous archive of cultural resources online at the BAM/PFA site, where the museum has maintained a leading presence since launching one of the world's first museum websites in 1994.
The BAM/PFA site provides unparalleled access beyond its own museum and film archive collections to those of other important cultural institutions, all of which can be searched simultaneously.
For the past six years BAM/PFA has led Museums Online Archive of California (MOAC), a groundbreaking initiative to make the collections of eleven California museums and libraries available online. Through MOAC, which is one of the largest online museum collaborations in America, visitors to the website will be able to simultaneously search 62,000 records with images, documenting the collections of institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Japanese American National Museum, the Iris B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, and the California Museum of Photography.
The Interactive University has recently become a MOAC project partner. If you visit the MOAC homepage, accessible by choosing “collections in CA museums” on the BAM/PFA homepage, you will find the IU Scholar’s Box listed under the projects banner.
Visitors to www.bampfa.berkeley.edu will be able to access complete information on BAM/PFA exhibitions, film series, and public programs, including daily and monthly schedules. The Museum Store's inventory of more than 4,000 books will also be available to search and purchase online.
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Bancroft Honored for "Images of Native Americans" Online Exhibit
By Kathleen Maclay, UC Media Relations
BERKELEY - "Images of Native Americans," an electronic collection that includes images and text from Bancroft Library materials covering 400 years of Native American history, has won a special commendation from the American Library Association (ALA).
The ALA announced the award at its annual meeting earlier this month in Toronto, noting that the digital exhibit includes enhancements not possible in a traditional, three-dimensional exhibit.
It also praised the site’s navigation features, as well as its chronicling of the evaluation, purchase and behind-the-scenes conservation of James Otto Lewis’ "Aboriginal Port Folio," the University of California Library’s 9-millionth volume and a jewel in the Bancroft’s Native American collection.
One online collection highlight is a section devoted to Lewis' "Aboriginal Port Folio," the first color plate book in the nation with images of Native Americans. On a tour of Native American treaty councils in the upper Midwest in the early 1800s, Lewis sketched the chiefs he saw. Later, he hand-colored their portraits and published these striking images.
Read the entire UC Media story here.
View the Bancroft exhibit online here.
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International Children's Digital Library
There is a free website where children, and families, can go to read books online. Launched in November 2002, here's how the International Children's Digital Library (ICDL) explains its work and goals: a research project to develop innovative software and a collection of books that specifically address the needs of children as readers. Interdisciplinary researchers from computer science, library studies, education, art, and psychology are working together with children to design this new library. With participants from around the world, the ICDL is building an international collection that reflects both the diversity and quality of children's literature. Currently, the collection includes materials donated from 27 cultures in 15 languages.
You may also read an analysis and review of the ICDL site that was recently published in the online journal First Monday. The review introduces features of ICDL and analyses use patterns during the first several weeks of the public site.
As described at the website, the project has five primary goals:
- to create a collection of more than 10,000 books in at least 100 languages that is freely available to children, teachers, librarians, parents, and scholars throughout the world via the Internet;
- to collaborate with children as design partners in the development of computer interface technologies that support children in searching, browsing, reading, and sharing books in electronic form;
- to better understand the concepts of rights management and "fair use" in a digital age;
- to evaluate the impact that access to digital materials may have on collection development and programming practices in school and public libraries;
- to develop a greater understanding of the relationship between children's access to a digital collection of multicultural materials and children's attitudes toward books, libraries, reading, technology, and other countries and cultures.
The materials included in the collection reflect similarities and differences in cultures, societies, interests, lifestyles, and priorities of peoples around the world. The collection's focus is on identifying materials that help children to understand the world around them and the global society in which they live.
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A New "Partner" in IU's Extended Family
The IU’s Associate Program Manager, Isaac Mankita, and his wife Rebecca Milliken, are new and thrilled parents of son Toby Milliken Mankita—their first child.
Born June 9, 2003, at 3:22 a.m., at the Summit Medical Center in Oakland, the newest—and arguably cutest—addition to the extended IU family arrived after 24 hours of labor. Mom did fine. Toby weighed in at 8 pounds, 14 ounces; he was 20.5 inches long. Though those specs are now a bit outdated as growth continues at a healthy pace.
In fact, things have gone so well that the entire new family (that would include Mom and Toby) accompanied Dad on his recent trip to Santa Cruz to attend the UCCP Summer Institute (see above). No word yet on Toby’s impressions of IU strategies, or the beach and boardwalk.
Though this was his first trip so far from home, Toby has enjoyed visits from grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins from New York, Arizona, Florida, Mexico City and Palo Alto.
IU staff congratulate Isaac and Rebecca, and wish health and happiness for the entire family!
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