A variety of federal, state and local stakeholders are making K-12 wide-area networking (WAN) an imperative. GOALS 2000 specifically links increased educational standards and schools' access to the Internet. The National Information Infrastructure (NII), which is funded through NSF, has an educational component (Newman, 1993). Federal agencies encourage K-12 Internet connectivity through a number of incentives (e.g., NSF, Hunter, 1992). A number of states and school districts are developing technology plans including wide-area networking, and parents as well as educators are demanding student access to up-to-date resources.
Common Knowledge: Pittsburgh (CK:P) is a project funded by the National Science Foundation to conduct research on the potential of the Internet to enhance K-12 education. CK:P is a partnership of the Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS; providing project educational leadership), the University of Pittsburgh (project management and assessment) and the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (technical expertise). In this paper we report on the experiences of CK:P during the project's first two years (January 1993 - December 1994), focusing on professional development issues. As difficult as it is to find money to update technology in the schools, it is even more difficult to find resources to support training of educators so that they can use technology most effectively (David, 1994). If wide-area networking initiatives are to succeed, teachers must be prepared to use the resources offered by these initiatives (CoSN-FARnet, 1994). A recent survey of K-12 technology use (Sheingold & Hadley, 1990) found that it can take 5 to 7 years for educators to become comfortable enough with computer technology to use that technology routinely. This "lag time" limits attempts at educational reform. In addition, many educators remain convinced that telecommunications is just another "fad" that will soon pass (Hodas, 1993).
Our focus in this paper is on veteran educators who will grapple with telecommunications issues over the next few years. We will discuss two related issues:
Getting the Educators Interested: Leveraging Change
CK:P is the brainchild of Robert Carlitz, a physics professor at the University of Pittsburgh, who became interested in the Internet as a K-12 resource and in 1989 arranged with the University of Pittsburgh to provide guest Internet accounts for local area educators. Through continuing interaction with these pioneers, curriculum ideas were developed that eventually became the heart of the first grant proposal to the NSF. By the time funding began in January, 1993, approximately 200 western Pennsylvania educators had access to the Internet. Some of these educators formed the core of CK:P in its first two years. (Carlitz & Zinga, 1994).
Once the first school year of Common Knowledge was under way, CK:P staff decided on a competitive process to expand interest into other schools. With the approval and support of the school district a Request for Proposals (RFP) was announced in October, 1993 (Wertheimer, 1994). A competitive process was used (1) to stimulate interest in WAN, and (2) to develop a sense of ownership and empowerment among the teachers. During that semeter workshops were offered at the CK:P beta site in a local elementary school so that educators interested in writing a proposal, but who had little or no experience with the Internet, could get an idea of what the Internet could be used for. Several hundred educators, including a number of administrative and support staff from the school district central offices, attended Internet workshops, usually after work hours. Ultimately, 35 proposals were received, mostly from schools but several from community organizations. Using a review process that involved representatives of major constituent groups (teachers, administrators and parents from the school district, and several CK:P PIs and project directors), seven schools were chosen to be second year sites. The interest generated by the RFP was both surprising and reassuring; many sites that did not receive funding proceeded on their own, making do with whatever equipment they had or could acquire through parent-teacher organizations and business partners. When possible, CK:P staff provided support in terms of advice and site visits to help set up equipment and software. In addition, a number of schools that had not submitted proposals began contacting the CK:P office for information. CK:P continued to provide guest accounts on the project's server to district educators, with dial-up access through local university modem pools. The education staff offered workshops on everything from basic email to SLIP (which allows people to have faster access at home), which did much to encourage Internet access.
A final category of interest development was peer training. Network team leaders and librarians at first year schools acted informally as peer trainers and resource people (finding school projects via newsgroups and mailing lists) for colleagues, even opening up their homes for demonstrations of software and hardware. Team leaders at two schools offered mini-workshops during the first semester, 1994, using different models. In one elementary school the team leader offered workshops three Fridays per month during morning planning sessions. This team leader also set up local mailing lists, so that teachers in disparate classrooms using the same curriculum project could interact with each other via email. In one of the high schools the team leader offered one-on-one sessions to interested teachers and staff. For this model the team leader had to make what arrangements she could, whether that was in the library, in a classroom, or in the computer lab; during lunch, a preparation period, or before or after school. The head librarians at both high schools also provided Internet training informally during work hours, by answering questions and showing people how to navigate the Internet and find resources. These activities represented educators' "in-kind" contributions because much of the preparation and resource exploration was done outside of work hours.
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