|
|
May 2003 News
Welcome to the May 2003 issue of the IU News. May's lead story announces the creation of a new strategic partnership between the California Digital Library and the Interactive University. The project addresses the needs of digital repositories and educational institutions, and will work to enhance and expand the innovative technologies the IU is building into it's Scholar's Box-a tool to make digital materials accessible and easy to use and re-use for educators and students. The rest of the issue contains other 'new' endeavors-a report on a new IU partnership project to focus on Bay Area watersheds, a new-look and new information at the Local Context website. In addition to updates about workshops and summer institutes and links of articles of interest, this month's newsletter is full of information. The lead story is introduced on the IU Main page and printed in full below.
Stories featured in this issue are:
Read archived issues of the IU News
The IU Community News is emailed and published the first Tuesday of each month. Read about how to subscribe or unsubscribe
California Digital Library/IU Strategic Partnership
 The California Digital Library (CDL) -the 11th university library of the University of California-and the Interactive University Project have recently established a strategic partnership. Working together, the CDL and the IU will test and develop 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.
On April 18th at CDL offices in downtown Oakland, about 30 CDL staff attended a joint presentation by IU and CDL that publicly launched the partnership. IU staff traveled to Oakland to demonstrate recent work on a prototype for the Scholar's Box-an online tool that enables users to discover, archive, manipulate and re-distribute information in digital repositories. CDL staff were excited by the possibilities inherent in the Scholar's Box technologies to further expose the public to the library's collections.
Recently, the CDL has begun to explore how it can encourage use of the UC libraries' digital collections-in online learning across the campuses and elsewhere in K-20 instruction. CDL has established the strategic partnership with the IU to assist in this work, by advising on how to integrate digital library and online learning environments, and collaborating to better understand how university-based digital library materials may be used in K-12 education.
Concurrently, the IU has been developing tools to open up university resources by means of information and educational technologies-in particular second-generation web technologies. IU work on the Scholar's Box will build upon and add significantly to developments emerging from this partnership and contribute to a practical understanding of how to use the university's digital assets in support of instruction.
While the partnership helps the CDL augment dissemination of its archive, particularly to K-12 communities, it also allows the IU to build upon past work and extend existing collaborations with faculty, research units, libraries, and museums on the Berkeley campus.
The CDL was established in 1997 to build the university's digital library, to encourage campus libraries to share their resources and holdings more effectively, and to provide leadership in the application of information technology to the development of the University of California's library collections and services.
Since its establishment, the CDL has amassed one of the largest digital library collections available anywhere. It has also adopted a unique service model: one that emphasizes service to libraries (academic and public), educational establishments, and other cultural and information organizations, before individual end-user services.
 The service model reflects an understanding that the CDL is a rich resource of digital content and powerful technologies that can and should be configured by the CDL and numerous third parties so they can meet the needs of a number of different user communities.
In this area of CDL endeavor, the IU will play an important role. CDL supports a range of services to encourage use of its rich collections in instruction at all levels-K-12 and beyond. These include:
- discovery services and directories that help locate materials in the collections that are relevant for use in specific instructional contexts;
- authoring tools with which collection content can be integrated into online curriculum materials and enriched, for example, with a narrative web of instructional information, interactive exercises, etc.; and
- course management systems.
While the CDL has already identified these areas of work, the CDL/IU partnership will hasten progress toward the wider availability of resources, and the integration of digital materials into classrooms, curricula, and learning environments.
With the launch in January 2003 of a new public website, CDL has created a platform on which to address distinctive needs. The website brings together in one place nearly 500 digital collections that have been created by UC libraries, museums, and academic departments, and that can be made accessible at no cost to users. The site is already a valuable resource. It is also an evolving online laboratory where the CDL can explore how best to integrate the digital library into online learning environments. The following links will provide information about CDL collections and services, new content, and a newsletter with updates on what's happening at CDL.
New IU Project Focuses on Bay Area Watersheds
A recently organized IU Project, City Watershed, unites past efforts of several IU Internet Learning Community Project partners including the UCB College of Natural Resources and the Urban Watershed Project. City Watershed will capitalize on existing resources and partner expertise to help students, teachers, and community groups understand-and work toward solutions for-the interrelated environmental and social problems affecting the Bay Area's watersheds.
 A goal of the project is to create on-site watershed learning laboratories, creek-side classrooms with wireless networks where K-12 teachers can engage students in inquiry-based environmental education, and students and others can participate in field research and restoration programs. Utilizing handheld portable computers and an online information repository-newly created and accessible via the IU Scholar's Box-participants in the field, as well as later at school and at home, will be able to post and retrieve photographs and data, locate and use reference information (including resources from libraries, museums and other web-based sites), and share their own findings, analyses, recommendations, weblogs, and digital stories.
In addition to its watershed learning laboratories and its online repository, this new project incorporates facets of successful education and restoration programs at UCB's CNR, at the Presidio of San Francisco, and in many East Bay watersheds. It promises to increase the participation of city residents in these programs, and to give communities and neighborhoods the skills to advocate in an informed and persuasive manner on their own behalf before planning and watershed management agencies at all levels of government. As the project matures, it is hoped that the online repository will become a valuable tool for watershed professionals and students alike, providing information about historic and current efforts to improve the Bay Area's environment.
Vision for the City Watershed project grew out of conversations with Berkeley Professor Don Dahlsten (Principal Investigator for the City Bugs project), the Urban Watershed Project's Doug Kern (Environmental Science 2 project), and the Urban Creeks Council's Mark Spencer. With their guidance and leadership, the project gained the support of CNR's dean and several of its faculty, as well as a number of important environmental, governmental and community groups, including the Crissy Field Center, the East Bay Regional Park District, and the National Park Service. In late April, 15 partners in all, led by the IU, submitted a proposal to the U.S. Department of Commerce's Technology Opportunities Program (TOP) that requested funding to enable the full vision of all the participants to be realized.
New Website For Local Context Project
The Local Context Project has launched a new and informative website that contains recently compiled teaching materials and educator resources.
Local Context works in Oakland high schools to develop and deliver 11th and 12th grade level supplemental government curriculum. The curriculum is focused on current local affairs, and on enhancing civic participation.
 In the current academic year (2002-2003) takes up the timely topic of redistricting, the decennial redrawing of political boundaries after the U.S. Census to reflect population shifts. The curriculum explores how communities can learn about, and participate in, the City of Oakland's and the County of Alameda's government policies and projects. Oakland students learn about civic governance and democratic participation, as well as aspects of survey design and analysis. University students are exposed to the expertise and resources in high school classrooms through opportunities that provide undergraduates and graduates with a chance to participate in public service in surrounding disadvantaged communities. Teachers gain technological expertise and access to supplemental curriculum. The curriculum is delivered to the classroom in three ways: Local Context staff visit a classroom; professional development sessions are conducted for teachers; individuals can download curriculum from the website.
Sponsored by the Urban Dreams Project and the San Francisco Foundation, the Local Context is a collaborative project between the Institute of Governmental Studies and the IU that works with Oakland Unified School District high school teachers to facilitate the incorporation of social science technologies into civics and local government curriculum with the goals of fostering both technological expertise and civic participation in Oakland's youth
Updates from BAWP and ORIAS
The Bay Area Writing Project
 BAWP has announced registration for the Summer 2003 Summer Teacher Series, and for its 2003 Summer Young Writers' Camps. Visit these sites for more information about the 11 courses offered for teachers-including coursed in grammar, theory, English language acquisition and literature and composition-plus the many offerings for young writers at sites in Albany, Fremont, Larkspur and Walnut Creek.
Office of Resources for International and Area Studies
ORIAS continues its timely offerings with an upcoming two-day conference and an early summer two-day teacher's institute, as well as a weeklong summer institute for high school teachers. See below for details of these three offerings
TEACHING ABOUT AFRICA, AFRICA AMERICA & THE AFRICAN DIASPORA
Two-day teacher's institute organized by the Center for African Studies with ORIAS, the Department of African American Studies, and the Center for Race and Gender
Monday-Tuesday, June 16-17, 2003; program information and registration here.
RELIGION IN WORLD HISTORY 2003
ORIAS Summer Institute for Middle and High School Teachers
July 28 - August 1, 2003; program information and registration here.
Recent Study Points to Trouble in Charter Schools
 A recently released study by led by scholars with Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), an institute based at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, contends that many charter students are exposed to less qualified teachers and weaker instructional support than if they had remained in regular public schools. The study also found other troubling trends among the nearly 700,000 students in 36 states and the District of Columbia who currently attend charter schools. The UC Berkeley-Stanford team briefed reporters on their findings at an April 4-6 seminar in Los Angeles.
For a full report on the study, and more details, read this April 8 UCB Press Release.
A May 3, 2003 article in the New York Times examines the charter school movement from a different perspective. In the New York area, tensions are emerging as charter schools move into the suburbs and governments face difficult funding and budget questions as it becomes clear that charter schools impose new fiscal burdens on already meager resources.
California Legal Battle Over Class Standards Reaches Courts
In this May 5 article, the San Francisco Chronicle's Nanette Asimov reports on a pending judge's decision that could profoundly change the classroom experience for thousands of students. And it could cost the state lots of money!
 The case is Williams vs. California, a class-action lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court in May 2000 on behalf of about 1 million pupils. The students suing the state say they are "fed up with an epidemic of poor textbooks, unqualified teachers and vermin-infested schools." The suit asks the Governor to set minimum standards of school quality analogous to what he has done for academic progress. Asimov further writes: "Under the plan described in the suit, the state would do three things: track which schools lack 'essential learning tools and conditions'; quickly provide those tools and repair poor conditions; and 'provide basic educational necessities' to all students.
Read the entire story here.
|
|
