After passing out a packet of information to all present, Rick Wertheimer called the meeting to order saying that there were two main items for discussion at the meeting. The first was that he wanted to give a project update by showing the advisory committee some of the things that have been going on in the district on the Internet. He said that he is very proud of what has been taking place this school year and wanted to have a chance to show it off. The second item is that he needs the advisory committee to consider some issues regarding what will happen with Internet support in the district in the long term. Common Knowledge has now existed for 3 1/2 years, and there are just 1 1/2 years left in the NSF grant.

With the use of an overhead display device connected to a notebook computer, Rick then gave the advisory committee a tour of exemplary World Wide Web pages that have been created in the school district in the past year. He drew the committee's attention to a CK:P web page (/projects/ckp/curriculum.html#example), that lists "exemplary uses" of the Internet. Rick explained that each of the CK:P sites has a server, and that teachers at each of the sites have been doing an amazing amount of curriculum development using Internet resources. Rick pointed out Web pages that were created for Increment Credit Courses offered during the fall of 1995 by educators in the district. We visited pages at CAPA, looking at student virtual portfolios, were told about a scoring rubric that has been created at Westinghouse H.S. to grade student homepages, and looked through the contributions that were submitted as part of the CK:P "Online" event that took place on May 17, 1996.

Rick explained that the "Online" event was an attempt to create a "snapshot" of the kinds of things educators used the Internet for on a typical day. The results of this event can be found at (/projects/ckp/online.html). The Education Staff received 90 e-mail messages from people at 22 locations throughout the district on the day of the event. Rick showed the committee examples of several of the items that were submitted, and encouraged them to take some time to look through the rest. He said that people did not do anything extraordinary for this event, that it is truly a snapshot of the routine things that people in the district do on the Internet day-to-day. He explained that the reason for doing this was because the advisory committee, at last year's meeting, suggested that the education staff do something that would encourage some cohesiveness in the district and that this was a way of spreading the word about what has been happening here.

Rick then invited comments from people on the committee. Carol Hicks shared an activity that had taken place at Liberty: a student created a homepage called "Myer's Guide to Websites for Kids" that can be seen at (http://lisa.liberty.pps.pgh.pa.us/meyer.html). Rick brought this up on the overhead screen. Barbara Rudiak suggested that we look at some of the pages that have been created at Phillips having to do with their river curriculum (http://www.phillips.pps.pgh.pa.us/) which was also brought up on the overhead screen for the committee to see.

Mike McCafferty asked if CK:P has any data on how often these homepages are being accessed, what people's reactions to them have been, and how we can measure the value of this activity. Janet Stocks said that the assessment staff has been collecting data on web site accesses, but this does not provide information on reactions or the value of the activity. Barry Check related a story about students in Tempe Arizona finding the Vann Elementary school homepage the week before the Superbowl, and that students at both schools have continued corresponding for the rest of the school year. Mary Lou Ruttle said that the Carrick Web pages have a guest book, that has been signed, with comments, by a variety of people who have visited.

Rick said that the activity of creating and maintaining web pages has raised some issues such as how students can have access during the summer to maintain pages. He said that the creation of web pages has become an ongoing activity, not just a product that is done once and put out there.

Mario Zinga then talked about a conference that had taken place in January during which approx. 40 people, representing different stakeholders in the district, created an acceptable use policy (AUP) for World Wide Web pages. A copy of the student AUP had been distributed to advisory committee members in the packet for the day's meeting. The main emphasis of this policy is that Internet access is for educational purposes. The people who created this policy also agreed that parents should have an opportunity to see student homepages before they are put on the web.

Rick then said that another activity that has been going on this school year is that the Education Staff has published a weekly newsletter that was distributed in hard copy throughout the district, and is available on-line at (/projects/ckp/publications/publications.html#newsletters). The newsletter covered many practical topics during the year. This was another thing that had been suggested at last year's Educational Advisory Committee meeting.

Rick reported that the Internet user population in the district is now up to 3,500 relatively active users. 1,070 of these are students. He went on to say that there is evidence that it takes teachers two or three years to get really comfortable enough with the technology to be ready to give accounts to students.

Rick also reported that there are currently 14 Common Knowledge sites on-line and six new high schools will be added soon. In addition there are a number of schools in the Hill District that are connected as a result of the Department of Commerce Grant and there is a lot of other activity going on in the district.

Rick concluded the first part of the meeting by saying that he wanted to bring the committee's attention to two pieces of research that have recently been published. One is a book by Janet Schofield, who heads the CK:P assessment group, called Computers and Classroom Culture. The second is a report published by researchers at CMU--Robert Kraut, William Scherlis, Tridas Mukhopadhyay, Jane Manning, and Sara Kiesler-- about home-based use of the Internet. Rick said he would distribute the second of these publications to the committee.

Next the committee moved to Issues for Consideration. Rick pointed out that a "migration timeline" had been included in the packet of information each committee member was given at the beginning of the meeting. This has been a joint project between Myron Lentz and his staff, the staff at the PSC, and the Education staff. Two aspects of this migration that were discussed were the migration of the modem pool, so that CK:P users will access CK:P accounts going through a modem pool at the PPS rather than through Pitt or CMU, and migration of school connectivity, which will also go through PPS rather than through the PSC. Rick said that so far the migration effort is going well, deadlines have been met and that he feels that the technology aspect of CK:P will continue smoothly after the NSF grant is gone.

Rick said that his concern was with the human support which the CK:P Education staff is currently providing. He is not sure how this will continue. This led to a long discussion about different possibilities: having students provide some of the support, locating it in School Support Services, what will happen if the School Board passes the district technology plan they are now considering. Rick said that the education staff currently, on a given day, responds to 50 phone calls, 1/2 dozen to 1 dozen trouble messages, goes out to someone's house to help them set up their modem, helps with local area network design, provides curriculum support at 14 (soon to be 20) schools, and does a variety of other misc. activities. Rick said that he thinks this kind of human support is key to the successful integration of technology into the curriculum in the district. And the support needs to be ongoing and friendly. He feels that CK:P has provided the district with a strong research base which can inform future district planning on technology. But, 1 1/2 years from now, if there is no district tech plan or other decisions made to continue this support, each school will be on their own.

There was no definitive resolution to this question. A number of people present felt that they wanted to await the outcome of the Board's consideration of the district tech plan. If the tech plan is adopted, support will be part of it. If the tech plan is not adopted, this issue will have to be considered again.

The meeting adjourned at 5:50 pm.