We will not attempt to recapitulate the full text of the proposal submitted to the National Science Foundation. That proposal is submitted as an attachment to the present proposal. The following paragraphs provide a brief summary of salient points from the NSF proposal.
The network and its supported activities will be designed to meet the following general goals:
The prime focus of Common Knowledge: Pittsburgh is upon the educational applications of wide area networking. The project is centered around a set of curriculum activities, and implementation is linked to the development of these activities. In preparing the proposals to the National Science Foundation, teachers and supervisors from the Pittsburgh Public Schools identified the following activities for possible inclusion in the project. The first six of the listed activities will be implemented during the first project year. As the project develops we expect additional activities to be developed and implemented. A procedure for this process is already in place in the school district, and CK:P's staff are currently facilitating the evolution of this process. The project list which follows has been excerpted from the proposal submitted to the National Science Foundation. Under the school district's current reorganization effort some of the personnel listed in the proposal are being shifted to new positions, and there will be some changes in the actual disposition of staff prior to our the next academic year.
The Westinghouse Science and Mathematics Program (SAM) is an ambitious program whose ultimate goal is to have African-American students succeed in the study of science and mathematics, and to pursue careers in these or related areas. One component of the SAM involves an individual research project which is carried out with the assistance of a mentor from the Westinghouse Electric Corporation. The present project would adapt this successful program to the network environment.
This project will link students from Carrick High School to those at Schenley High School, the site of the city's International Studies magnet and International Baccalaureate program. Additional links will be established to connect these schools to schools in other countries and develop discussions in French, German and Spanish.
The Pittsburgh Public Schools own several hundred works of art, which have been donated over a 75 year period by a group known as the Friends of Art for the Pittsburgh Public Schools. This project will catalog the collection, photograph individual pieces, scan these photographs and make them available for online access. This material will initially be used in the third grade arts history program and by students at the Pittsburgh High School for the Creative and Performing Arts. Software and hardware associated with this project will be available for application to problems of scientific visualization, geographic information systems and other demanding graphics applications.
The McCleary Elementary School re-opened in September, 1992 with a restructured design. Children at the school work in cross-age teams and follow an interdisciplinary curriculum. Following an idea of the National Arts Council, the McCleary Design Team is creating a learning theme based on "Architecture" with a subtheme on "Monuments." The Monuments theme will be developed using computers and computer networks to manipulate maps, charts, scanned images, drawings and text. The Monuments theme will be expressed in four modules - Little Big Horn, Salem, Selma and The Johnstown Flood.
Access to a catalog of the holding of the libraries of the Pittsburgh Public Schools will be available via the network. We will use the Project Mercury software from Carnegie Mellon University to manage standard catalog entries, supplemented by librarians' reviews. Separate software will be developed to generate an interactive component through which students can provide their own reviews and discussions of the school district's holdings.
This school, which is the city's Elementary Gifted Center, will serve as a test site for the hardware, software and training methods that will be used in CK:P.
Two of the Pittsburgh teachers who have participated extensively in the initial development of CK:P, Susan Fineman and Mario Zinga, participated in a summer science institute sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Bell Atlantic Foundation. The institute was held at George Washington University in July, 1991. Next year the AAAS program will expand to involve satellite institutes in each of the states served by Bell Atlantic and will serve teachers throughout these states. A proposal from Fineman and Zinga and Al and Jan Nous at the University of Pittsburgh was accepted to begin a Pittsburgh satellite. The satellite institute will run a 2 week program focussing upon robotics, remote sensing, the environment, lasers and fiber optics, telecommunications and computer applications. The Pittsburgh satellite will develop their telecommunications in coordination with CK:P and help infuse topics such as remote sensing into curriculum in the Pittsburgh Public Schools.
Based on the needs of teachers who have participated in the Commonwealth Partnership Biology Initiative or the NIH SEPA Teachers Computer Workshop, a network is being established to link these teachers electronically. The needs of these teachers range from simple facilitated communication to library facilities and interactive methods for curriculum development. The success of electronic communication at this level depends on the ease with which the end users can find and access the information or service they need. Our program has identified a growing population of science teachers who have a need to use a network. A collaboration will use our focussed group of users and the network facilities of CK:P.
The Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers Educational Research and Dissemination Project is one of more than 240 sites of a teacher development program created by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Local participation will be adapted to use the network facilities of CK:P.
All students in grades 7 through 12 are now required to keep all their writing projects. As students progress through the grades a massive amount of data will be accumulated. This project aims to provide a subset of this data in electronic form. Portfolios will thus be accessible by individual students to monitor their own progress and by classroom teachers. This data will also be available at the district level for the purposes of program monitoring and public reporting.
Langley High School serves as a focus for two teacher training programs in the Pittsburgh Public Schools. One involves student teachers doing a semester of professional practice in the high school; the other involves high school students interested in careers in teaching. The network will link this school and others with the School District/University Collaborative, a collaborative partnership which links the school district with teacher training sites and a research center. Students at the Langley Teaching Academy will develop skills in the use of electronic data networks, as will new teachers studying at member schools of the Collaborative.
Pittsburgh teachers and curriculum specialists are involved with teachers from 21 states and six urban school districts in an effort to establish a set of national achievement standards, assessment items, and scoring rubrics. Under the direction of the Center for Education and the Economy and the University of Pittsburgh Learning Research and Development Center, the project seeks to achieve world class instructional standards by the year 2000. Local participation in this project currently involves 26 teachers and curriculum specialists from the Pittsburgh Public Schools. The network will provide an effective means of coordinating this activity and extending it across the district.
The business education program of the Pittsburgh Public Schools incorporates the philosophy of learning by doing (Tobin, 1987, NCSVE, 1985). One activity which illustrates this point is the in-class simulation of a working business. This project will extend current simulations to involve interactions among classes in several schools, with the different classes assuming the roles of different units of the simulated business.
The Oliver High School special education program addresses the needs of students with severe learning problems. This project will develop telecommunications activities for these students with particular emphasis upon cooperative learning skills.
The Fulton Academy of Geographic and Life Sciences is an elementary school of special emphasis. Staff of the Academy are committed to the teaching of geography through an interdisciplinary approach. In the unit Regions Across the Land the landforms of a region are introduced by a geography teacher; the science teacher discusses related topics such as climate and environmental changes; the language arts teacher deals with folklore and regional literature; the art teacher deals with natural beauty, regional dress and crafts; and the mathematics teacher presents quantitative aspects of these subjects. The network will provide access to relevant information in these subject areas, will present these topics through Geographic Information Systems and other software tools, and will provide direct links to some of the regions under study.
The English curriculum for grade ten was initiated under the Syllabus Examination Project in September, 1990. A central activity (Applebee, 1981, Birdwell, 1980, Hillocks, 1986) of the journalism and poetry units of this curriculum is the sharing and responding to the works of other students and of the teachers. Similar units are in the process of development for grade 9. The network will be used to expand this activity to involve interactions across the city's ninth and tenth grade classrooms.
Children's Literature Discussion is a project that includes fourth and fifth graders from the Linden and West Side Elementary Schools in reading, writing, and talking about literature, especially that from the Junior Great Books and the Heartwood Reading programs. These programs emphasize the study of literature through reading, writing and discussions (Alverman, 1987, Raphael, 1992). The network will be used to link children in the two participating schools and extend discussions to a much larger and more authentic audience.
This project will start with students in the International Studies program at Schenley High School who will develop further the international links that have already been established at this school. This activities will be integrated into the social studies curriculum and extended to other high schools in the city.
The Spring Hill Elementary School is one of two restructured schools that will open in September, 1992. The Design Team has chosen a team teaching approach and proposed to use telecommunications projects throughout the curriculum. Projects are designed around the new Pennsylvania State Regulations concerning student outcomes and implement a multicultural component of the curriculum which addresses Family Organizations, Educational Traditions, Economic Patterns, Language, Religious/Cultural Traditions and Artistic Expression.
The Pittsburgh Science Institute, which is part of the Division of Science Education, is involved in revising the secondary science curriculum in keeping with the philosophy of the National Science Teachers Association proposal to integrate science teaching and with the reforms suggested by the American Association for the Advancement of Science to show the interdependence of society, science and technology. With the development of the tenth grade course, Science, Technology and the Environment, the Science Division is implementing changes to reflect these considerations. Teachers will use the network to develop and pilot the lesson plans, activities and evaluation instruments for this new course.
Through CK:P students and teachers in the Pittsburgh Public Schools will gain access to up-to-date information in a variety of fields. They will become acquainted with a whole range of new information resources and with the people who have helped to create these resources. Students and teachers will be able to interact with their peers across the country and around the world.
The technology which allows CK:P to link schools throughout Pittsburgh to the international Internet is a technology which has developed rapidly over the last half dozen years. Baseline connectivity to school sites will be provided over standard voice-grade telephone lines, with upgrades to new digital services (ISDN) as they become available. Within each school there will be a local area network, constructed with economical and flexible wiring similar to that used for standard telephone lines. Access to the network will be provided by standard personal computers, similar to those typically used in business, higher education and homes. School services will be provided by more powerful computers, and traffic will be routed by low-cost, upgradable routers.
All of this technology is fairly standard, economical to acquire and flexible to use. The major technical challenge of CK:P is not in these details but in the system which binds them all together. It is necessary that all elements of the system will operate reliably with minimal on-site expert assistance. The entire network will be managed at a single central site and will be designed to be immune to the failures of individual components.
As the network is assembled and installed, personnel from the Pittsburgh Public Schools will work with project staff from the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. In this manner the PPS staff will gradually assume many of the maintenance and support functions for the network, so that by the end of funded program period the entire operation will be self-sustaining. This mechanism is already operational. The major committees which act as an interface between CK:P and the school district have been begun their regular meetings, and district personnel have worked together with project personnel on our initial site surveys.
It is unusual for NSF programs to approach the institutionalization of their associated technology in so explicit a manner. If successful, CK:P is likely to provide an important prototype for many other NSF programs, thus extending the project's reach far beyond networking projects and projects focused upon mathematics and science. Thus the impact of the present proposal will be widespread. The program of Common Knowledge: Pittsburgh will help shape the technological infrastructure of schools throughtout the region and across the country. The program's emphasis on the use of appropriate modern technology will enable schools to develop and acquire the information resources they will need to educate the youth of the twenty-first century.
The assessment component will explore the following basic questions:
In addition, however, qualitative data such as focussed interviews and the content analysis of plans, curriculum activities and other documents, will also be gathered. These case studies will facilitate cross-case comparison while allowing a substantial amount of flexibility to assist in the understanding of particular cases.
A set of information objectives applicable to all cases will be developed. Descriptive information will be collected on topics such as the initial and evolving objectives of each project, the actors involved, the amount and kind of network usage, and the degree to which network utilization changes the structure and functioning of the educational environment and the people in it. Three general principles will guide both the data-gathering and data analysis. First, an effort will be made to be as rigorous and systematic as possible. Second, data analysis will be an ongoing and iterative process. Third, we will triangulate and integrate the quantitative and qualitative elements of the research.