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Highlights from IU Community News 2002/03
The following stories were featured in the IU Community News in 2002/2003. The IU News is published on the web the first Tuesday of each month (http://iu.berkeley.edu), and reports on three key areas of interest to the University / K-12 community:
- The classroom, field, and research work of IU Internet Learning Community Projects;
- Developing strategies and tools for the best use of the Internet and educational technologies to make university, library, and museum resources accessible to faculty and teachers, and in this endeavor to focus on ways to improve student outcomes through the integration of digital curriculum materials into the classroom;
- To track and report on educational technology issues, challenges, strategies, and solutions for a University / K-12 community that encompasses faculty, teachers, staff, students, and families.
California Digital Library/IU Strategic Partnership: May 2003
 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 Oakland, about 30 CDL staff attended a joint presentation by IU and CDL to announce the partnership. IU staff demonstrated 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 Scholar's Box technology 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 in K-12 instruction. CDL has established the strategic partnership with the IU to assist in this work; IU will advise on how to integrate digital library and online learning environments, and collaborate to better understand how university-based digital library materials may be used in K-12 education.
IU has been developing tools to open up resources using information and educational technologies—in particular second-generation web technologies. IU work on the Scholar's Box will add to developments emerging from this partnership and contribute to practical understanding of how to use the university's digital assets in support of instruction.
To read the entire CDL/IU story visit: http://iu.berkeley.edu/IU/May2003Homepage
Award Winning Work at Y-PLAN Project: June 2003
 The 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. This year Y-PLAN participants expressed desire to undertake a project that would create something tangible they could take pride in. They did not have to look far to find a challenge—directly across from their school was a blighted park. They decided to make it better. Two classes of McClymonds students worked with UCB graduate student mentors, and, over the course of 10 weeks, created the design for a new McClymonds Mini Park. The students presented their plan for the park at Oakland City Hall on Thursday, May 8th.
Later in the month, on May 20th, the Architectural Foundation of San Francisco presented the Y-PLAN with the 2003 Youth + Architecture Award for outstanding work engaging young adults in the urban environment.
The Oakland City Hall presentation and the AFSF award capped another successful year of Y-PLAN work. The Redesign and Development of McClymonds Minipark project involved a number of graduate students from UC Berkeley, as well as more than 40 McClymonds students and 3 teachers at the school. IU's Deborah McKoy once again served as the project leader.
To read the entire Y-Plan story visit: http://iu.berkeley.edu/IU/June2003Homepage
IU Helps Teachers & UCB Faculty Share Urban Dreams: March 2003
 On February 6th, teachers and curriculum specialists from Oakland came to the Berkeley campus for the third in a series of four workshops that explore the history and literature of 20th Century Mexico. This study group represents an evolution in Oakland's Urban Dreams Project, expanding the areas of faculty/teacher exchange and resource development; it offers teachers and curriculum specialists a chance to refresh and extend their learning and teaching skills, while at the same time creating—as a direct outcome of work done to prepare for the workshop presentations—a resource set of materials to support instruction in high school Social Studies and English. The workshops are led by Alex Saragoza, UCB professor of Ethnic and Chicano Studies.
The current workshop series is the first implementation of a model the IU/Urban Dreams partnership plans to offer teachers and curriculum specialists. It will build on this inaugural series to include additional social studies themes. The model provides a creative opportunity in three key areas of curriculum and professional development: a Berkeley faculty member organizes, presents, and with technical assistance, archives digital and traditional resources; teachers in workshops are exposed to the material and provided context, framework and leading questions in the area of the faculty member's expertise; a lasting digital resource set is created—which, when the program is fully implemented, will be comprised of video tapes and transcribed written accounts of the sessions, sources for materials such as samples and references, links to digital resources in museums and libraries, and an archive of course digital materials—all available for future reuse and dissemination.
Read the entire Urban Dreams story at: http://iu.berkeley.edu/IU/March2003Homepage
IU at Educause Conference: November 2002
 During the first week of October, at the 2002 Educause Conference in Atlanta, members of the IU team gave a presentation about the Interactive University Project’s work to provide digitized UC Berkeley resources from diverse academic disciplines, including campus collections in libraries and museums. The IU is working to create and sustain a portal-like Internet place where these learning materials will be available to the public.
In a presentation entitled Creating Learning Objects from Research Content to Open the University, the team explained the IU plan to make an online "teacher's box" where learners from the K-12 community can locate, save and assemble discrete digital learning objects into larger lesson components and plans.
IU Director David Greenbaum, along with Raymond Yee, and Chris Ashley, spoke on October 2nd to an interested audience. The IU team used examples and experiences from recent work to explain the technology and discuss the related challenges of developing an end-to-end process that will create an open, networked environment where university and K-12 learners may access a wide variety of Berkeley materials and repositories.
Current IU work builds on previous initiatives that have digitized content and developed collaborative standards and systems for storage, discovery, and display of digital content. The IU is working to create an ecosystem in which university resources from all academic areas are digitized and assembled into learning objects in a standard, networked environment for university and K-12 users.
Read the entire Educause article here: http://iu.berkeley.edu/IU/November2002Homepage
Cal Heritage Works With History Students: February 2003 
"Lately I've been immersed in American history and what students need to know to do research in this area, and I keep having the same conversations with 5th grade teachers, 8th grade teachers, 11th grade teachers, librarians, university faculty and graduate student instructors. What's fascinating is that the issues facing students and teachers doing history are essentially the same, whether these students are 10, 14, or 19 years old. With that in mind, it's interesting to realize that one outcome of the California Heritage Project's work with history teachers in Oakland public schools, has been the ideas and processes that have evolved into a project I'm currently working on. The experience has been instrumental in helping The Teaching Library develop a new approach to providing undergraduates primary source instruction here on campus. The work with OUSD has enriched the ways we are teaching undergraduates historical research."
This recent observation by Lynn Jones, Director of the California Heritage Project, reveals something about the way librarians can help students at all levels do historical research. Jones, along with Teaching Library colleague, Corliss Lee, is currently providing instruction to UC Berkeley's History 7B course-American History from 1865 to the Present-to help undergraduates increase their understanding of primary sources, and get access to materials available from the Library, including Bancroft Library's digital collections.
Read the entire Cal Heritage story at: http://iu.berkeley.edu/IU/February2003Homepage
IU's Vorhaus Fellows Complete Year: August 2002
 On June 17th at the Oakland Technology Learning Center the IU's nine inaugural Jill Vorhaus Teacher Fellows celebrated a year of work with a video showcase. These new videos, written and scripted by the Vorhaus Fellows, and created at the Center for Digital Storytelling in Berkeley, represent nine unique aspects of teaching and learning, and capture some of the experience or challenge each teacher encountered during the school year.
As they explored the video medium to reach a wide audience with anecdotal and informative stories and presentations, the Fellows drew from their teaching experience to create digital videos that contain humor, joy and challenge. These presentations were conceived as a means to entertain an audience, and share experiences with other educators to create a foundation on which to build collaborations and improve student achievement.
During the year each Fellow fulfilled classroom teaching responsibilities; the group also met more than half-a-dozen times and established on-line relationships through e-mail and a scripting website. These contacts, face-to-face and on-line, enabled collaboration that furthered inquiry and deepened understanding about how technologies might be integrated into classrooms and curricula. Informal research and discussion, as well as sharing of discoveries and experiences, fostered a dynamic set of associations and perspectives—which each Fellow plans to take back into the classroom in the 2002/2003 school year.
Read the entire Vorhaus story here: http://iu.berkeley.edu/IU/August2002Homepage
The EDGE: Eastmont Digital Griots Enroute: July 2002
 Griot: A member of a class of travelling poets, musicians, and entertainers in North and West Africa, whose duties include the recitation of tribal and family histories; an oral folk-historian or village story-teller, a praise-singer (from the OED).
In early June, seven students from Oakland's University Prep Charter School Academy gathered around computers and video equipment at the Eastmont Mall. Each had a story to tell; each needed to find the words, pictures and sounds. They began to recount personal histories and examine relationships with family and community. Honing these reflections into short digital movies, the seven forged themselves into griots, and in the process pioneered a new program: Eastmont Digital Griots Enroute—EDGE.
EDGE is a partnership of UC Berkeley's Institute of Urban and Regional Development (IURD) and the Eastmont Computing Center (ECC), supported by a grant from the Community Educational Resource Center (CERC) program.
IU's Deborah McKoy and Rick Jaffe worked closely with IURD's Community Partnerships Office and ECC's Director and staff to conceive the project and design its curriculum.
The goal of the writing workshop is to help students identify events and issues in their lives, and shape these into a personal narrative that provides the foundation for an application essay for college and UC admission.
Read the entire Griot story here: http://iu.berkeley.edu/IU/July2002Homepage
IU's ES2 Students Reveal Their Presidio Plan: June 2002
 On May 22nd, at the Presidio of San Francisco, graduating seniors from Galileo High School, members of Richard McDowell’s Environmental Science Honors Course, explained their plan for restoring the Tennessee Hollow Watershed which feeds the Crissy Field tidal marsh. The room was packed for the presentation, members of the audience included other Galileo students, SFUSD teachers, Presidio planners, Park Rangers, and UC Berkeley faculty, staff and students. The class described the history and present conditions at the Presidio, and outlined their proposal for restoration and public use of the area in the future.
Following their historic review and assessment of the current situation, the class presented a proposal for actions and policies to be implemented in the future. Details of this plan gave voice to their vision statement: “To conserve natural eco-systems, wildlife, and historic landmarks, while creating an economically self-sustaining site.”
The students used pictures, historical documents, observational data they had gathered, a three-dimensional model they had built, humorous skits, and a question and answer follow-up to convey a detailed assessment of the Presidio’s past and the challenges that lie ahead.
Doug Kern, from the Urban Watershed Project—who has collaborated with Berkeley Professor Bill Berry to make the project possible—opened the hour with introductions and acknowledgement of the many partners who contribute to the students’ success. Among important supporters Kern cited: San Francisco USD, Galileo Academy, Presidio Trust, the Presidio Post, UC Office of the President, UC Berkeley and the Interactive University Project.
Read the entire ES2 story here: http://iu.berkeley.edu/IU/June2002Homepage
Vice Chancellor Padilla Meets Y-Plan Students: April 2003
 On Wednesday, March 19th Vice Chancellor Genaro Padilla visited McClymonds High School in Oakland to meet with 10th grade English students participating in the Y-PLAN—an IU supported project to expose high school students to urban planning and design.
Dr. Padilla's scholarship focuses on the formation of Mexican-American autobiography, and on multicultural and urban American literary experience. Padilla led an intense and rewarding hour-long discussion with 20 students who recently read House on Mango Street, a series of interlocking stories about coming of age in the Latino section of Chicago by Sandra Cisceros.
The visit grew out of an NEH grant submitted by IU's Deborah McKoy and Professor Padilla; the grant proposes to develop new humanities curriculum at McClymonds by connecting it to the literary and social history of West Oakland. During the discussion, the students all introduced themselves and shared a bit about their work with the Y-PLAN. Two students gave a more formal presentation about their Y-PLAN work to date, and invited Padilla to their final presentations at Oakland City Hall on MAY 1st.
The student presentations were a fruitful beginning to the articulation of controversial issues concerning local redevelopment efforts; they gave a glimpse of emerging debates about how to treat the open space called "Mc. Mini Park", which students will be discussing and developing strategies for during an upcoming planning and brainstorming session.
Read the entire story about VC Padilla: http://iu.berkeley.edu/IU/April2003Homepage
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