Introduction
Chris Hasegawa (chris_hasegawa@internet.monterey.edu)
18 Mar 1997 20:49:50 U
Subject: Time: 7:56 =
PM
OFFICE MEMO Introduction Date: =
3/18/97
Hello!
I am Chris Hasegawa, a professor at California State University Monterey =
Bay and the evaluator for the Virtual Canyon project funded through the =
Monterey Pennisula Unified School District. The project involves a lot =
of collaboration between the School District, two Universities (CSUMB and =
University of California at Santa Cruz), the Monterey Bay Aquarium and =
the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. There is a lot of outreach =
to community resources, and the bringing together of this new =
"development community" in the building of our prototype is perhaps the =
most interesting part of my evaluation work. I am also the principal =
investigator on an AT&T funded project where we are trying to build a =
learning community by providing computers, phone lines, and a voice mail =
system to the families and teachers of an inner city school in San =
Francisco. Again, the process of building community is the most =
interesting part of our process (to me anyway, I'm not sure AT&T would =
agree) and we've paid a lot of attention to the process of building our =
initial "development community" including teachers, administrators, =
parents, community based organizations, and faculty and students from two =
universities, and then inviting a whole bunch more people (basically =
everyone involved with the school) to join the learning community. In =
both projects we are messing around with Intranets which we hope to open =
at some level to the Internet, and we are trying to assess usefullness =
without being too intrusive.
At this time, our project servers are down as we gear up for the release =
of the prototype on the Virtual Canyon project, so you cannot log onto =
our webpages. We hope to have some of our preview sites available by =
next week.
As to our designated topics for the first week:
In my opinion, the building of community is really what is needed to have =
successful educational reform. The projects where we've had success, =
especially those in low SES neighborhoods and initially low technology =
schools, have been based on the idea of building community, first through =
in-person meetings and celebrations, then building useful and participant =
oriented intranets where parents and students could access information =
and interaction that was meaningful to them. From there we led folks out =
onto the Internet and asked them to share what they learned while they =
were addressing their own needs.
As to the question of which groups to involve in community outreach, we =
have made efforts to involve as many groups as possible, and then =
community based organizations, parents and parent groups, and school =
staff people sort of self selected to become heavily involved at the =
beginning. Then we asked each of the groups that got hooked at the start =
to target one group that was initially interested (and sort of petered =
out) and one new group to try to create forums, resources, activities to =
get the new groups involved (or re-involved). And each of those groups =
were asked to target two groups and onward and upward. We started out =
with the most open invitations possible, and then kept track of who was =
interested in us and tried to get all of them (and folks they could =
influence) as involved as possible by targeting them. The key for us was =
targeting an audience (e.g., parents with kids interesteed in sports) =
creating forums/resources for them (e.g., sports oriented webpages, =
listing of school sports activities, bulletin board discussions on topics =
like "How hard should you push your child to do sports?" and then =
offering what we created to them and turning it over to them.
Political support is very important. The building of a community really =
requires buy in by all of the players, and to get that commitment, you =
need to make sure that the political pieces are in place before you start =
any project. So you need to make sure that the key "power" players, in =
our case, the local Superintendents, Executive Directors of the Aquarium =
and Research Institution, and University Presidents/Deans are on board =
before you get the "worker bees" rolling full speed. In our case, the =
strategy was very much like the one outlined above, that is, we got =
together the folks in our community planning group, tasked each of them =
to sell their particular institutional leader on the concept, then as we =
work, we invite the leaders to quarterly meetings with our =
Advocacy/Advisory Team which involves experts from the fields reflected in=
our project. These political efforts, and they are a lot of work, have =
been rewarded by consistent support and frequent mentions with various =
boards, which has resulted in being able to do some things that we might =
not have been able to do in building our community.
Hope this is not too outspoken for a first entry, but thought I'd try to =
spark a bit of discussion with my suggestions and can't wait to read =
about how others are doing similar work. Thanks for the opportunity and =
look forward to the interaction!