Education Advisory Committee Minutes Tuesday, April 20, 1993 3:30 - 4:30 p.m. PSC Minutes taken by Laurie Maak Bob Carlitz Bob discussed broad goal of the CK:P project -to include all of school district in 5 years -year one there are 4 sites - Woolslair, McCleary, Westinghouse H.S., Schenley H.S. Purpose of committee; -to stimulate new curriculum projects and figure out which ones to support -to serve as a mechanism for institutionalization the project in the PPS -will make decisions with regards to which projects are to be added and how to bring new projects aboard Meeting Format -one hour with agenda -once month -if cannot attend, send alternate Mario Zinga -mail alias will be set up for group CK:P Packet: -modifications and revisions will be in next packet version -page 2 shows the four committees, there is one other local committee dealing with technical issue -the Ed committee will be very involved with looking at new projects -most of the text in the packet is from original grant, -the page we've revised is the Guidelines for New Projects -the first year sites have done #1 - explore the network and submit a curriculum project -these first year sites are presently in step #2 - putting together a Network Team -phase II - Project Review will be central to committee -PSC wants to see a technical review when projects are submitted Year One projects stimulated by RDC inviting division directors to submit projects. The format for submitting a project was suggested, and information was provided to division directors for how to go about his task. At subsequent meetings the four Site Coordinators will present what is happening at the four sites. Judy Weinberg CK:P staff should offer inservice at Beta Site for perspective school groups who may be interested in putting together a network curriculum project. Invite visits to Beta Site. CK:P could cart equipment to a school and do a demo. There's a need to get sites up and running and to develop examples of network projects that can serve as models for other teachers to look at. Each site could then be training facilities. Bob Carlitz Bob started a new topic - kickoff -Pat Crawford and the PSC have prepared a press release -ask Pat Crawford to include a CK:P description in the information that she sends to schools -Sen. Wofford has been invited and the group making arrangements is waiting to hear -this group should think about how to structured an internal announcement -contact principals (go to principals meeting) -deliver info to ITL's and to Instructional Cabinets -demo what a teacher involved in a network activity has done -PTSO groups -offer dial-up accounts to District teacher This led to a discussion of dial-up accounts. Dial-up accounts might invite more participation from PPS people that are not involved. Dial up is defined as using a computer and a modem, not on a Local Area Network, and accessing the CK:P computer by dialing into a modem pool either at CMU or Pitt. Presently all PPS people use the Pitt modem pool to reach their hamlet accounts. There was some concern as to how to manage 100 or so new dial-up accts. Clarification, will new equipment be in place. Dial-up access is what most PPS people currently have. CK:P projects will results in sites with better connectivity. In kick off and during the next few months familiarize teachers with the project and what it can do. It's probably better to take equipment to them. The demo should show example of what can be done. If possible, maybe CK:P can do a video to provide information to teachers. Need to be timely in generating interest and delivering services. Judy Westerman Librarian can collect examples of network activities that are going on. These can be shared. Ed Henke There's a need for a mechanism for letting people in the District know what is on the net. e.g. President Clinton's press conference, Kidsphere, gopher, WAIS Mario Zinga Besides the curriculum projects there are two other projects that will straddle years one and two. These are the Art and Library projects. The Art projects looks to photograph, scan and catalogue all the paintings or pieces of art in the District's collection. These will be collected as an image data base available locally and on the net. Judy Westerman The CK:P Library project looks to take all approved titles and create a database on net. Students could search this resource for book titles and review. This resource would include reviews done by both teachers and students. Bob Carlitz At some point we should discuss administrative activities using the net. Additional money for that needed, because CK:P is an academic project, but this group can at least begin to explore the options in this area. Another topic we will need to consider is ethical behavior and responsibilities when using the net. Bill Brown NIH directors, have to run courses in ethics. On BB has info on. How to teach ethics? NIH ednet. Gene Hastings Gene gave an overview of the technical issues -need to consider whether to deploy new things quickly enough to keep interest -need to figure out how to overcome dial in overload with modems -servers in schools will be identical to those out on the net -school servers will be able to access info quickly and get around bottlenecks -CK:P is looking for a point and click interface and mailers with graphical attachments and audio At the alpha site equipment may be pieced together and it may work with only very skilled, basic functionality. At the Beta site we want to have things that will work much better. Later these will be available for productions - curriculum projects. CK:P.edu domain is 95% set-up. Transition in one week or so.