North American Web Developers Conference, October 1998:
Four years ago, when I put up my first web site, I joined a small group. Receiving the "top 5%" awards really meant something then. Now we see those beginnings as the tip of a truly large iceberg, that continues to change its shape even now.
In the course of developing six distance learning projects over the past four years, I have seen the designs evolve in response to new technologies and widely varied teaching situations. The projects described here have moved from technology-focused "firsts" to content-driven creations for new computer-filled classrooms. The topics range from the Arctic to Antarctica to sailing expeditions that circumnavigate the world to rare books and maps to wolves.
As educators become more familiar with the available technologies, their demands on developers increase. To be effective, projects must have tools that teachers can use with ease, as well as an awareness of the needs of the curriculum. I have learned that successful distance learning projects focus on three main areas: the requirements of the educational situation, the status of the technology and the details that drive the project. My journey shows how project design changes and adapts to myriad requirements.
Keywords: education, technology,K12,Student Ocean Challenge,satellite,wolf,Arctic,Argos,Around Alone,James Ford Bell Library,maps
Four years ago, when I put up my first web site, I joined a small group. Receiving the "top 5%" awards really meant something then. Now we see those beginnings as the tip of a truly large iceberg, that continues to create its shape even now.
Every distance learning project in my portfolio connects in some way to the internet, which I consider an umbrella term that includes e-mail, ftp and the World Wide Web. E-mail refers to the technology that allows cross-boundary written communication without long distance costs. Initially it was limited to text-only messaging, but now multimedia elements are easily attached to e-mail messages. In my early projects, the World Wide Web served as a visual complement to the e-mail. It has evolved into a technology that includes audio and video elements, rapidly becoming a combination of television, video games, a huge shopping mall, and libraries.
In this paper, I will follow the short, yet potent, trail that has brought me here. My projects have moved from technology-focused "firsts" to content-driven creations for the new classrooms that are filled with computers connected to the internet. In this environment, successful distance learning project design focuses on three main areas: the requirements of the educational situation, the status of the technology and the details that drive the project. My journey shows how project design changes and adapts to myriad requirements.
My first encounter with technology in education began in 1992, with the initial training expedition for Will Steger's International Arctic Project. A high frequency [HF] radio and a primitive e-mail system developed by MCI would be the only communication link between the expedition in the Northwest Territories of Canada and a small group of schools following the adventure.
We had one problem: how do we transmit the radio messages to the e-mail? We decided to send a teacher to the base camp in Resolute, NWT. He spoke to the team by radio on a regular schedule, wrote up the messages on an early laptop and sent them by e-mail back to the main office, where they were forwarded to the schools. We accessed the messages through Telnet, an early form of internet communication. The messages came through in text only format. That method was also used for the training expeditions in 1993 and 1994.
In 1995, the main expedition of the International Arctic Project was to cross the Arctic Ocean by dog sled. The 5-month expedition occurred in the high latitudes of the Arctic, which presented a unique set of problems. We had to find a more sophisticated system, which sent me on a search for the cutting edge.
The team wanted to send coded messages to the office daily , where they would be decoded and forwarded to about 4,000 schools and individual followers.
In late 1994, a few phone calls revealed the magnitude of the problem. Out of all of the communications satellites that crowd our skies, only two were in an orbit that could "see" the North Pole: Argos, a collaborative effort by France and the United States, and Healthsat, a new low earth orbiting satellite launched by Satellife to serve the medical needs of remote areas in the Arctic and Africa.
A few more phone calls brought another bit of enlightenment - in order to use any of these satellites, one had to create a complete circuit among the satellite, the computer, the software and the transmitter. Suffice it to say, that this part of the puzzle was extremely complicated, which brought us to the doorsteps of a few extraordinary engineers.
For the Argos system, which is used primarily for weather and wildlife data collection, a transmitter is set up to send short bursts of data every 90 seconds or so, automatically. I decided to search out some creative engineer who might have made a software program that would send short messages. We found a program in France that sent a grand total of 32 characters - spaces and periods included! This would not be much of a message. So, we continued the search. A fax to 125 Argos-authorized manufacturers yielded the first of the technology miracles - one company had such a software program!
Mel Clark, an accomplished engineer, spent months in the Arctic overseeing weather data collections. His wife asked if he could come up with a messaging system for them to use, since he was so good at sending data. So he did. He could send messages out, but she could not respond. His software - called the Melgram - sent out four lines and had been extremely reliable. This was a beginning.
The company, CTA Space Systems, offered to send the entire package to us. Immediately after it arrived, we packed it into a car, drove up to Will Steger's Homestead in northern Minnesota, and set about testing it. We loaded a pre-formed message from a laptop computer into the transmitter, which was a metal box 1/3 the size of a shoe box with a 15 cm. flexible antenna attached. We carefully placed it out in the snow where it would have a clear view of the sky and covered it with a plastic sled. The next morning, we checked our e-mail for a response from Mel in Virginia. It was there . . and as we opened it we could read the first line - "Bingo!" What a thrill. We had contact.
A few ups and downs later, the Argos system was in place, the computer in its own little insulated sleeping bag inside a sealed case with a hot water bottle to keep it warm enough to operate. It was also wrapped in plastic to keep condensation from causing problems. This package was sent off with the team when they left for St. Petersburg, Russia, in March, 1995. Several days later we received the first message - from the northern tip of Siberia to St. Paul, Minnesota. Now that was truly a technology miracle! It took about six hours to send and receive the message. But, as is often the case, the high was followed by the most extreme low. The computer had died, we were informed, and the team was sending the entire package back to St. Paul with the final flight out. So, we were left with no means of communicating with the team. When the computer package arrived, we plugged it in and it worked perfectly. It had been a simple case of battery failure.
In the face of a near disaster, the office staff huddled and decided to hold the team at their start point until we could refit the communications package and send it back. Mel suggested we add a 9-volt battery pack for the computer itself, in addition to the lithium batteries that powered the transmitter, thus giving the computer's battery a boost that would last for the five months. With this accomplished, the computer and other gear was packed up and sent off with one of the office staff. It made it safely back to the team and, as we say, the rest is history.
The team sent a message every day - entering it on the computer in the evening, sleeping while the transmitter did its job in the corner of the tent and packing up everything for travel the next morning. In all, the team sent 84 reports with location and weather data in addition to brief descriptions of their experiences. These messages were downloaded by Mel in Virginia, forwarded to the office and then sent out to 4,000 addresses every day of the 5-month journey. We sent the messages out by simple e-mail, since a listserv was not readily available. The entire process of sending took 10 minutes, thanks to a well-organized and error-free list of e-mail addresses, one of the details mentioned earlier.
In early 1995, a second system became available to the IAP. It was based on new technology that used a low earth orbiting (LEO) satellite launched by Satellife. It included a sophisticated 2-way transmitter that could send and receive multiple pages of text, as well as images. When we heard about it, Will Steger was determined to test it on his expedition if we could. After the team had departed, several engineers came forward to aid with the testing and implementation of the new system.
In the end, we picked up equipment left behind on Ward Hunt Island by a previous expedition and an engineer riding in the plane to the North Pole re-worked it enroute. He then left it with the team. Gordon Wiltsie, a photographer for National Geographic, was joining the team for a few weeks and offered to be trained on using the new system. After major fine tuning on the trail, the IAP team was able to send the first digital photo from the North Pole and to receive messages from the home office as they neared re-supply points and the end of their journey. That was another thrilling technology breakthrough for all of us!
The IAP was a heady start to my encounters with technology and education. In terms of its audience, the program at IAP was quite simple - outgoing messages with occasional questions sent through a web site at Scholastic Network. A brief resource guide explained the expedition in print.
As the IAP was coming to an end, it seemed sad to lose such a wonderful project. Arctic expeditions are rare, because they are expensive and dangerous. So, it was time to try creating a project without an expedition. If one could come up with a design that resembled the daily excitement of receiving adventure messages, there were many possible topics.
The result of these thoughts was "Blue Ice: Focus on Antarctica." It was the product of a collaboration with Cathy de Moll, the manager of Will Steger's Trans-Antarctic Expedition. We decided to use computer-based communications tools such as e-mail and the relatively new World Wide Web. We would deliver content by e-mail and keep a web site active throughout the duration of the program as visual support to it. In addition we would produce a printed resource guide that explained how to use the technology and how to run the program in a classroom. We decided to serve the 400 subscribing teachers by personal e-mail, again using a clean database of e-mail addresses. A moderator filtered all messages and assisted teachers when they had problems.
The audience for the Blue Ice project was Grades 4-12 and their equivalents worldwide. The challenge in this case was to create a program that would help the teachers to use the technology at the same time they introduced the content to their curriculum. For 13 weeks, we created an interactive, global classroom that met experts from many fields, participated in a data project with a scientist at Palmer Station in real time, exchanged views on philosophical questions, shared drawings and poems and learned an amazing amount about Antarctica. The program continues today through Cathy de Moll's company, OnlineClass. Many of the design elements that surfaced in that first year are still active in that program and others.
My next venture provided the framework for a more teacher-driven program. Blue Ice followed an aggressive daily schedule of e-mail and exchange and the classroom teacher needed to track weekly deadlines for student input. For some, this was an overwhelming task. Student Ocean Challenge [SOC]'s OceanEXPO, a 2-year circumnavigation of the world in celebration of Expo'98 in Lisbon, addressed these issues with a slightly different design.
The audience for this program was teachers of grades K-8. Again the program provided a print resource guide, this time including reproducibles for the classroom. We divided each topic into three study areas - geography, science and math, and sailing, with two additional topic areas to pique interest: species of the month and explorer of the month.
The technology employed for the OceanEXPO program was the same as that introduced for Blue Ice and the IAP, with an altered delivery schedule. The e-mail messages were limited to one a week and were primary source materials from the sailors on the trip. OceanEXPO offered limited interactivity in the form of monthly guests such as a Panama Canal pilot and a weather consultant to sailors, who shared their experiences with the students through an essay and a Question & Answer session. Students' drawings and poems were submitted via the internet or the regular mail to be displayed on the web site.
The primary function of the web site was to provide guided web research related to the monthly topics in the Resource Guide. Over time, this feature - safe web surfing - became a highlight of the design. It cut down the work for the teachers and gave the students opportunities to practice their internet research skills. The introduction of Web Detectives, a feature with specific questions related to selected web sites, became a popular activity for students.
The OceanEXPO design gives teachers a more open framework in which to participate. The topic changes aligned with the ports around the world, which provided a living experience of geography. From the teachers' responses, this open design has merit and bears further development
Simultaneously with the OceanEXPO program, I began to explore a different kind of technology project. Becky Rennicke, a science teacher who had participated in the IAP, had a dream of her own. She wanted to do "real" science research in her classroom. Her students were deep in the study of the wolf in west-central Minnesota. She felt the time was right for receiving grant support and really building the substance of the wolf project. She provided two things to get us started - her dream and a list of biologists and their phone numbers. Ten months later, we had received three of the four grants we wrote and were well on our way. We incorporated experts, technology and opportunity to provide the target audience of students in grades 7-12 with a "hands-on" experience of field research.
The technologies introduced in this design were chosen specifically because of the educational situation. Becky had started working with radio telemetry in the tracking of the wolves. The equipment consists of a receiver and several hand-held antennae. The wolves wear collars that send out a signal. The students direct the antenna in a circle and listen for the signal on the receiver. When they hear a loud and clear signal, they can be fairly sure that a wolf is nearby in the direction of the antenna. A successful field operation requires two sets of equipment at two different points that create a triangle with the wolf. This allows the students to calculate wolf's position.
Radio telemetry technology requires students to be in the field on a regular schedule to be effective. It is a rare student or teacher who has time for such a commitment. So, we searched for and found a new approach: satellite collars that send data through the Argos system first used in the IAP. The data from the collars - the positions of the collared animals - come right into the classroom as e-mail. Students translated the data into HTML and posted them on their web site for other schools to read. Thanks to a collaboration with Agassiz National Wildlife Refuge biologists, the students have been tracking "Stubby", their satellite-collared wolf, for over one year. During the late spring of 1998, he finally left the pack and dispersed into another area of Minnesota. The satellite technology allows the students to follow him wherever he goes. Doctoral candidates from the University of Utah share the data with the students.
The wolf project has become the "Eyes on Wildlife" project and Becky currently operates it with a few other schools. Moorhead State University in northwestern Minnesota now houses the project as part of the its teacher training program.
My current project expands on the formula developed for Blue Ice. Since 1982, Student Ocean Challenge and Mame Reynolds have provided the educational link for a famous single-handed race around the world - the BOC Challenge. Now called Around Alone 1998-99, the event takes nine months and fits nicely with the school year in the northern hemisphere.
The basic package consists of a print resource guide centered on the race with two large posters for tracking the participants and learning about their boats. In the past, Ms. Reynolds delivered updates to the schools in eight print newsletters mailed monthly. The advent of e-mail and the Web has changed that in the four short years since the last race.
In 1998, monthly e-mail newsletters replace the print version. Here the students receive messages from the sailors, participate in the construction of a drama based on early explorers, share their opinions on a topical question or issue and ask questions of guest experts.
On the web site, a private area makes its debut with the Around Alone 1998-99. A new web teaching tool, pathfinder pages, have become popular. They are constructed from existing web sites and can be used under the conditions of "fair use" for off-line activities in the classroom. In addition, there are Web Detective activities, which are directed web research designed for specific ages and topics. A "Student Showcase" will display the results of the students' efforts throughout the year.
The Around Alone 1998-99 program launched on September 26 with the start of the race. We are following the sailors with rapt attention as they cross the Atlantic Ocean, heading toward Cape Town, South Africa. The broad range of activities offered with the program is keeping the students and the teachers busy.
Finally, after learning from each project to date, the most recent development is a new program on maps and discovery. The thrust of the project is to study geography and history at the same time. The vehicle for this study is the collection of original maps and books dating from 1400 to 1800 that are housed at the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota. Carol Urness, curator of the library, collaborates with me on this endeavor. The target audience is grades 7-12, with a focus on geography and social studies teachers. The technology focuses on the internet once again.
This project extends the open framework yet another step. It uses the web almost to the exclusion of the e-mail. For this program, which is heavily visual, the 12 units will be prepared in HyperText Markup Language [HTML] and Portable Document Format [PDF], compressed and made available for downloading by password through a web site. Each school that subscribes to the program will be able to access the units on their own network, which eliminates the use of on-line delivery beyond the one-time download. The print resource guide contains classroom-ready black and white copies of the maps used in the program. These are provided by the Library and may be used in many different ways. Finally, the e-mail will be delivered monthly, with updates to the materials and current interactive events for each month. Interactivity will take place on a web conference site, hopefully with the possibility of posting visual elements as well as text.
This design allows teachers to dip into the units at any point throughout the entire year. While the Resource Guide will recommend a path through the units, the monthly activities may be engaged at any time. Thus, we are able to address various educational structures: 9-week units, block schedules, quarter or semester systems, and just about any other configuration that might occur.
The purpose of this project is to reach a large audience with materials that would not be available to them any other way. The project is considered experimental, because the topic is completely academic. By addressing geography, history and the Age of Discovery, the program intersects with existing curricula in many different ways.
Over four years and six projects, much has been learned. One of the most difficult struggles in the evolution of the portfolio has been the constant awareness that the educational audience is not completely wired. And once wired, a gap occurs between the hardware and the teachers' ability to use technology in the daily curriculum. That gap is called training. And even the most enlightened budgets may not have enough set aside to close the gap. Therefore, many internet projects still function on two levels: bringing curriculum enhancing elements into the classroom and training the teachers along the way.
Gradually we are learning that, while it is good to have a desktop computer in the classroom, it is better to have a laptop computer in the hands of each student. The computer is not an end, it is a means to an end. It is a tool similar to a pencil and paper. It has organizing capacity far beyond the three-hole notebook. And daily use is the best way to learn its possibilities.
But . . . we are not near that goal. As a developer of projects that use technology, I am well aware that we still need to cater to a variety of standards. It is for this reason that e-mail has not given way to the web conference in my projects. It is the reason that my web sites are simple, direct and easy to use. It is the reason that audio will be implemented this year for the first time and video will not appear at all. I maintain my high standard for fast downloading even though technology can deliver the T1 and faster connections now. Regardless of the daily hype we read and hear, the percentages show that our audience - educators and families - do not have access to these wonders yet.
The most complicated issue in project design is to know when to move on to the newest developments. I sit hovering on the cutting edge constantly. I introduce a new idea - for example, frames - when I see a good use for it. I write a bit of javascript or a java applet when I have the chance. But the bulk of the content of my programs still arrives at subscribers' computers as either e-mail or an attractive, but direct web site. The focus of my work with technology and education remains with the content and the miracle of the global classroom. The fact that students in South Africa, Uruguay and New Zealand can share the Around Alone 1998-99 with students in North America thrills me. That is the true magic of this technology!
The past four years have been exciting ones. As technology evolves, combining it with education grows more exciting and challenging. It's a wonderful time to be engaged in the process and to see the results in classrooms across the world.
In the course of developing six distance learning projects, I have seen the designs evolve in response to new technologies and widely varied teaching situations. Several key elements occur in more that one project because they serve a need or create successful interactivity and learning. I have listed some of these pointers here.
These are the bits of advice that have come out of my experience. And, as with any creative endeavor, I learn constantly from those around me. Lifelong learning has never been as necessary as it is in this field of technology and learning. It is a fine opportunity to share ideas and skills.