I. Project Identification

Signed by: Ronald Abdouch, Project Director

II. Project Summary

This report, submitted to the U.S. Department of Education, is the 1998 annual report of the Project: The Community Discovered: The Search for Meaning through the Integration of Art and Technology into K-12 Education. It is referred to in this report as The Community Discovered and is currently completing its third year of full operation. It is a five-year project that links technology and the visual and performing arts with other subject areas to transform the education of K-12 students in Nebraska and nationwide. A special emphasis has been placed on serving disadvantaged students in rural and urban areas. The focus of this project is to develop curriculum models of engaged student learning using technology and resources of the Internet. Five art museums are currently involved: The National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; The National Museum of Wildlife Art; The Joslyn Art Museum; The Museum of Nebraska Art; and The Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden. In addition, the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, the Getty Education Institute for the Arts, and the Omaha Community Playhouse have also assisted with the project. 

This project is being conducted by Westside Community Schools in Omaha, Nebraska. The Community Discovered has expanded the mission of Prairie Visions: The Nebraska Consortium for Discipline-Based Art Education. Prairie Visions is a consortium of nearly 100 Nebraska school districts, the Nebraska Department of Education, the Nebraska university system, three Nebraska art museums, and other art and education agencies. Prairie Visions has been sponsored by the Nebraska Department of Education, the Getty Education Institute for the Arts, and the Nebraska Art Teachers Association. Recently, administration of Prairie Visions has been transferred from the Nebraska Department of Education to the Nebraska Arts Council. 

The Community Discovered builds upon and extends the impact of the initial pilot project, The Art and Technology Integration (ATI) Project, which was conducted by Westside Community Schools and Grand Island Public Schools in Nebraska. The ATI project received a two-year grant from the Excellence in Education Council, which was funded by Nebraska state lottery proceeds and completed in June, 1997.

The Community Discovered project has five goals:

• to enable students to achieve high academic standards by integration of the arts and technology into core subject areas
• to provide students and educators equity in access to information and museum resources at the state and national levels
• to enable educators to effectively use appropriate technologies for constructivist teaching and learning across the curriculum
• to enable educators to implement effective curricula incorporating the arts and technology in core subject areas
• to create a national network of educators to support the development and implementation of appropriate learning strategies integrating technology, and the arts with other core subject areas

To help facilitate realization of the goals and evaluation of the project, a three-tiered advisory board is in operation and is being utilized throughout the project. The members of these boards are asked to interact with project staff for the purpose of guiding the evolution of the project and providing feedback regarding the outcomes. The members of the boards and the descriptions of the purposes are provided in Appendix F. The three tiers are defined as the Board of Advisors (BOA), a group of nationally respected professionals with connections to the goals and activities of the project; the Community of Friends (COF), a group of parents and community representatives who share an interest in the goals of the project and are vested in the success of the project as stakeholders in our communities; and the Council of Administrative Partners (CAP), representing individuals from each of the participating districts and partner agencies involved in the actual conduct of the projects activities. Each participating district has also developed its own Community of Friends board and is represented in the larger COF through annual meetings of these boards. The co-chairs of the advisory boards are Senator J. Robert Kerrey and Dr. Elizabeth Broun, Director of the NMAA.

An academic on-line conference for students is being planned for the Spring of 1999. This group of virtual conference participants will include students across the K-12 continuum and from all participating districts. They will also provide input and feedback to project participants and the evaluation team through a listserv and focus group process. In this way they will assist in providing information about the growth and development of the project. See Appendix K for information on the virtual student conference.

The Council of Administrative Partners continues to meet periodically for a progress update, discussion of project initiatives, and planning activities based on formative evaluation and discussion of participant commitments. The latest annual meeting of all boards was held on April 3 and 4 (1998), which included site visits to each participating school district. All board members, in response to their request to visit classrooms, were divided into small groups on the first day of the meeting for travel to each of the participating districts outside the Omaha area. A meeting of the boards took place in Omaha on day two, with reports and demonstrations from the project teachers and students and each of the arts agencies participating in the project. Members of the project staff and the evaluation team reported on particular aspects of the project and its progress to date. Various members of these boards have also assisted in earlier meetings related to planning for sustainability of the project. The processes used and the outcomes of these meetings are periodically shared at the annual Directors Meetings and the Western Cluster Meetings.

III. Project Status

Within its third year of operation, the project "The Community Discovered: The Search for Meaning Through the Integration of Art and Technology in K-12 Education" is continuing to make substantial and consistent progress in its training, classroom integration, and evaluation activities. As described in the Project Summary section, the project focuses on enhancing education by developing interdisciplinary constructivist curriculum units that deliver the arts and art resources to the classrooms of Nebraska and the world via use of the Internet. The project is a multi-element education program that: brings the arts and art museums into classrooms electronically; develops computer integration strategies; trains and supports teachers; builds curriculum, instruction, and assessment strategies; and seeks to build a nationwide community for the arts and technology integration. The involvement within the participating districts has been systematic and has included the direct participation of the following.

Throughout the past year, teachers in The Community Discovered Project received training in creating integrated curriculum, various technology/Internet skills, constructivism, and how to utilize the arts in an interdisciplinary unit. Many of the skills learned in these training sessions have been passed on by participants to colleagues partnering with participants and have been institutionalized within the curriculum. District site coordinators have also played an important role in providing both technical and curricular support to participants and partners. They have also worked to maintain the enthusiasm of these teachers by providing help to both teachers and students, in and out of the classroom.

The Evaluation process for The Community Discovered continues to expand and evolve, with evaluation related data being collected and systematically reviewed for formative input into specific project objectives and related project activities. The evaluation design is carefully matched to project activities and is implementing a five year plan for both formative and summative review (see Appendix B). The evaluation is essentially that of an "impact analysis." In evaluation studies, impact analysis can be defined as "determining the extent to which one set of directed human activities affected the state of some objects or phenomena, and . . . determining why the effects were as large or small as they turned out to be" (Mohr, 1992, p.1). In this examination of the impact and effectiveness of The Community Discovered project, the evaluation design is focused on analyzing data related to each of the five goals and related project objectives. The evaluation determines the general progress and impact of the project on K-12 education in the participating schools and includes a systematic review of the learning environments for both students and teachers. The evaluation also helps document the project as a potential model for replication by other educational institutions and organizations.

The evaluation process continues to use multiple sources of information, and includes a comprehensive approach to data collection that is targeting information related to each project goal and objective. These data types include: 1) teacher survey data, 2) electronic data, such as listserv participation and electronic logs, 3) classroom observations and videotapes, 4) teacher and student interviews, 5) student projects and portfolios, 6) teacher growth plans, 7) focus groups, 8) standardized and teacher created test data, 9) attendance records, 10) trends in disciplinary actions, 11) stakeholder surveys, and 12) teacher classroom research initiatives. All data is summarized and placed within a World Wide Web page format that is available for review by the project staff, participants, and interested stakeholders. The web site representing the evaluation portfolio is: http://ois.unomaha.edu/cdeval/ The evaluation web site is fairly comprehensive and is organized using the following themes and graphics in order to present the evaluation information clearly.

The evaluation team for The Community Discovered project is assembled from the Office of Internet Studies (OIS) in the College of Education at the University of Nebraska - Omaha (evaluation coordination) and WestEd Laboratories, an additional source of external review. The evaluation process emphasizes the blend of both quantitative and qualitative data analysis with conclusions and implications for each reporting period based on multiple sources of data. Reports such as this one are being produced for each reporting period with additional formative feedback provided to the project between reporting intervals (i.e. summaries of teacher survey data), and through dissemination using the evaluation-related World Wide Web page. The status of each project objective (along with organizational goals and related evaluation activities) is summarized in the following narrative.

Additionally, consensus meetings held to establish partner statements of shared vision, activities, and outcomes for shared sustainability efforts (Appendix D) provide a mutually defined measurement backdrop. These statements are integrated and referenced throughout the report and are reflected in the Evaluation Indicators and examples of the data collected.

It is important to note that the goals and objectives have evolved slightly from their original format as written in the original application. While the content/intent of the original goals and objectives remains unchanged, the organization and numbering of these objectives were altered slightly during the first year of the project (as reported in the first progress report of 2/96).

The project evaluation has documented to date a highly successful project with considerable impact and outcomes, which are summarized under each objective within the Status Section. The Component Summary reflects the wide ranging results of the project (within the format requested). See the Component Summary on the next page.

Goal 1: To enable students to achieve high academic standards by integration of the arts and technology in all core subject areas.

 

Objective 1.1 80% of students in classes using the modules will show evidence of improved academic achievement as indicated by: a) decline in absenteeism, b) increased student self-concept as indicated by student attitude surveys and focus groups, c) students performing at higher levels as determined by each school's assessment of student progress and electronic portfolios.

Activities	Timeline
Conduct an examination of longitudinal student attendance records.	1999-2000
Perform an annual student attitude survey.	1996-2000
Conduct annual focus groups for students.	1996-2000
Examine standardized test information on student performance.	1999-2000
Collect information on student performance (electronic portfolios).	1996-2000
Have students create an electronic portfolio/multimedia presentations.	1996-2000
Conduct case studies of selected students involved.	1996-2000
Collect samples of student work created during unit involvement.	1996-2000
Provide students access to technology resources that support learning.	1996-2000
Structure learning to empower students to make connections.	1996-2000
Use the arts to build holistic teaching-learning experiences.	1996-2000
Engage students in reflective processes of self-evaluation.	1996-2000
Promote critical thinking & problem solving through discussion, debate, cooperative learning, and interdisciplinary teaching strategies.	1996-2000
Evaluation Plan	.
Selected student attendance records to track absenteeism.	1998-2000
Selected records inventory to examine standardized test data trends.	1998-2000
Narrative summaries of focus group feedback.	1996-2000
Analysis of student attitude data.	1996-2000
Progress reports of students involved in integrated constructivist curriculum projects.	1996-2000
Review of student work from integrated constructivist curriculum.	1998-2000
Case studies (virtual cases compiled on-line).	1998-2000
Document evidence of student behaviors of engaged learning.	1996-2000
Evidence of more analytical thinking (Student Product analysis).	1996-2000
Electronic tracking of disciplinary actions to monitor trends.	1998-2000
Electronic tracking of teacher absences.	1999-2000

Status

The Community Discovered project is well underway for the third year of formal activities, and participating teachers continue to develop and initiate appropriate planning and delivery of curricular units. Each of the participating teachers is building on the training received over the previous summer, which provided extensive experiences in technology, discipline based art, constructivism, interdisciplinary planning and teaching, and general integration strategies. Professional development activities are continuing throughout the academic year. Teachers are also periodically reviewing student performance with access to a World Wide Web page journal/log process which is accessible over the Internet. In addition, selected teachers have identified individual students to examine more extensively for a student case study process. Teachers are also initiating work on their curriculum modules/units using a standard format which has been refined over time based on participant input. These modules are available over the project web page. Each unit is being linked to the National Goals for Education, the National Standards for all disciplines, the State Frameworks for all disciplines, specific District Outcomes for the participating districts, individual teacher-learner outcomes identified by the participating teachers, selected student-learner outcomes identified by the participating teachers as related to their specific curricula, and the goals of The Community Discovered. Using a centralized web page, these unit plans can be accessed easily by project teachers or other interested educators from around the world. These units reflect the shared vision for what students will be able to do within the project.

Student development work is a strong part of the project, and students are involved in a large variety of innovative and creative projects. Some students have developed electronic products such as electronic portfolios, HyperStudio stacks, panoramic and object virtual reality representations of sculptures, or other lesson-based electronic products utilizing a variety of educational technology software. These electronic student products and multimedia projects are also helping to represent the project within the Community Discovered web site, as evidence of student accomplishments. They also help reflect student achievement. Several visuals from various periods of the project represent the very high quality of these student projects.

Student Project Examples:

The two visuals above represent an extensive multimedia project (over 500 MB) completed by students in the Westside School district who were involved with sharing information about themselves, their schools, and their community, with students in Winnebago, using virtual reality panoramas, text, sound, and imagery, in an extensive multimedia development process.

Many projects conducted in the Community Discovered Project are very collaborative in nature, such as this impressive mural completed by elementary students under the direction of Ms. Julia Noyes, a professional artist.

 

Focusing on the content of: 1998 Technology: Digital Pictures, Internet Art: Sculpture Disciplines: Art, History, Social Studies, Writing Access URL: http://ois.unomaha.edu/cdeval/stuprods.html

Many of the participating Community Discovered schools are sharing such student products and project related resources on school based web pages, such as this one from Sandoz Elementary in Lexington:

  

In addition to the more visual student products, student written products have also been impressive related to various periods of the project, and are represented by these selected writings.

Poetry:

New Perspective: A Tribute to Idu the Storyteller, From Jamie

 

He looked at them with wonder

Anticipation at us all

Wondering who we were

Teaching us new lessons

Maturity

Confidence

Sharing

Lessons to carry on

To future generations

Helping to build a better world

One day, one smile, one hug at a time

Offering solutions

To simple problems we face

Offering revelations

Helping you look inside yourself

Looking inside myself

Learning new lessons

Changing perspective

Just when I thought I was lost

And couldn't find myself

Someone changed my mind

And gave me a new perspective

Focusing on the content of: 1998 Technology: Word-processing Art: Peforming Arts, Storytelling Disciplines: Poetry, English, Social Studies Access URL: http://ois.unomaha.edu/cdeval/stuprods.html

Poetry: I love a parade

Big funny moving floats

Cool dancing cartoon characters

Chariotts pulled by black horses

Red, white, and blue flags

And bands with loud music

I Love a parade

3rd Grade Student

Journal:

The most unusual thing at the Joslyn was the statue of Madame Antoinette. As you stood looking at the bronze made statue, it seemed that the statue was looking down you. It glared at you like you were a fool and she was the greatest. The artist also made her hands arched back, like she was going to jump out at you. It was this that made it so unusual.

 

The best thing about the Joslyn was the paintings of William H. Johnson. I like his kid style and it was enjoyable to look at his paintings. What was tempting was not running my fingers at the obvious rough paintings.

 

What I will always remember about the Joslyn is the paintings in the Modern Art area. I thought some of them were weird, but I really liked one that made you look and think about them.

8th grade student

Student attitude information has been collected by the evaluation team and has included student focus groups, interviews, and journal reports from some classrooms. Each of these sources indicate that the project is indeed motivating for students, and student quotes show a real energy and enthusiasm. Representative quotes are included below.

Student Written Reflection:

I learned a lot about art this year. Art has helped me understand other cultures and religions. I've discovered new places with art.

3rd Grade student

 

Interview:

I like Art. It makes me think. Whenever I do Art it makes me feel good the rest of the day, and I like Math better.

7th grade student

 

Student Journal Entry:

Art can help me study landforms, people, how they feel, and art helps me learn to have fun. Some artists we have learned about are William H. Johnson, Claude Monet, Picasso, Homer Winslow, and Van Gogh. All of these artists helped me to do better.

3rd Grade student

 

Focus group:

The biggest difference between completing my project on the computer and pencil and paper is that paper and pencil is boring. On the computer you have fun and learn.....

4th grade student

Many of the student developed projects are shared within the school and community, in 1998, this was often in the form of a "Street Fair", where individual school districts showcased student work and project related student artifacts.

Teachers within the project have also routinely commented on the potential for the use of the art and related technology to help enhance the teaching of other disciplines such as mathematics. Below is a representative quote from a teacher.

Teacher Quote:

Hello! I have used Art in my 7th grade mathematics classroom often this year. My most successful experience was when I taught my pattern unit and looked at images, music, and dance that included mathematical patterns. The students seemed very motivated by the art, and were more willing to discuss mathematical patterns, and willing to take the risks with their traditional mathematics work to find the patterns.

7th Grade Mathematics Teacher

In several of the participants' classrooms, parents are also surveyed for feedback within the project (often in multiple languages). Such feedback is routinely positive, and the quote below is typical of the parent support for the project.

Parent Survey Response:

Scott shared his excitement of the technology and art activities...he was especially enthusiastic about presenting his Hyperstudio stack to others. I feel Scott was learning a lot without knowing it. Problem solving was a big issue while preparing the Hyperstudio stacks. I noticed Scott was more excited about all his school work during this time.

Parent of 9th grade student

For several quantitative measures, the project is examining classroom-based research data being collected by the project teacher participants which targets outcomes directly linked to their individual project growth plans and classrooms. This classroom-based research data appears positive. As an example, one teacher focused on increased reading scores. Data indicated that students within the project had significantly increased in the California Test of Basic Skills (CTBS) reading scores from a pretest average of 21.7 to a posttest average of 62.5. This was then compared to a control group (from a similar class which was not involved in the project) that increased to a posttest score of only 43.6.

Teachers are examining a wide range of classroom based achievement through graduate study class options which has include a variety of quantitative measures such as attendance information and standardized test information. A summary of this classroom research analysis is represented graphically below.

Reading (n=37)	The art integration appeared to benefit in CAT 6th grade achievement
Math (n=95)	Art integration 7th grade groups achieved equally with regular groups on a mathematical patterning test. Qualitative analysis noted more pattern based connections in the art integration group.
Literacy (n=40)	An art integration 2nd grade group achieved equally with a control group on a teacher made writing tests.
Attendance (n=132)	Student attendance in several art integration vs. no art integration classes were equivalent.
Art (n=26)	Third grade students integrating art within several other units greatly improved their attitudes toward art as reflected on a teacher survey.

Within the population being served, subgroups of students who are at-risk for academic failure or who have been verified for special education services are also being identified for targeted evaluation activities. In particular, selected teachers are closely following at least one student each in an individual case study process, which includes focused electronic journaling via web page. In addition, working with other faculty within the University of Nebraska system, the Evaluation Team is also directing the work of graduate students who are conducting thesis related research incorporating project activities. For example, a recent thesis study involved 95 students in an experimental and control group design for a careful examination for art integration into the classroom. An abstract of this thesis is included below, and the full thesis is available upon request from the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Goal 2: To provide students and educators in rural and disadvantaged urban areas with equal access to the information and resources available from state and national institutions associated with the arts.

Objective 2.1 A minimum of 750 art images and performing arts resources will be available through the Internet along with curriculum and contextual information for use by educators and students. Images will come from the collections of the Smithsonian NMAA; the Getty Museum; the Joslyn Art Museum; the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden; The Museum of Nebraska Art; the Kennedy Center; the National Museum of Wildlife Art; and regional performing art agencies.

Activities	Timeline
Museums will suggest appropriate images for which copyright, issues have been resolved and teachers may select from that pool of images.	1996-2000
Suggestions by teachers for specific themes, cultures, or time periods will be utilized by museum staff in guiding their efforts to make resources available electronically.	1996-2000
The museums will digitize 750 art images from their collection (collectively each year).	1996-2000
Hypertextual and contextual information will be developed to accompany each image.	1996-2000
Educators will access the images along with contextual information.	1996-2000
Teachers will review the Smithsonians thematic cluster CDs for potential resources.	1996-2000
A database of images will be created.	1996-2000
Teacher requests regarding arts resources that would be most useful will be communicated to partner agencies to guide planning.	1996-2000
Make teachers aware of new programs on-line as teaching resources.	1996-2000
Utilize museums' mailing lists for education packets, materials, and exhibits.	1996-2000
Evaluation Plan
Survey of museums about number of images selected and digitized will be conducted.	1996-2000
Analysis of range and quality of images will be conducted.	96, 98, 2000
Electronic log of "hits" by teachers and by students on digitized images database will be analyzed through Web Site analysis.	1996-2000
Survey of teachers and students using digitized images resources will be analyzed.	1996-2000
Survey of hardware and software availability for teachers and students will be analyzed.	1996-2000
Structured interview of museum personnel will be conducted.	1996-2000
Site visits to workshops, presentations, etc. will be conducted.	1996-2000

Status

The evaluation team has found that a real strength in The Community Discovered is the close working relationship between the museums and educational institutions. A true collaboration has developed between these two sets of institutions, and both are focused helping students learn through the project. A recent example is the mutual collaboration on the planning for The Community Discovered ConferNet 99, which promises to be a model event based upon the idea of a virtual conference for students over the Internet. Productive joint meetings were held on September 24, 1998 and October 1, 1998 related to this planning process (See Appendix K for a description of ConferNet 99 plans).

The Community Discovered Project was also proud to add a new museum partner this year, the National Museum of Wildlife Art. This museum has considerable works of interest to teachers and education and has already moved quickly into a collaborative mode with the other institutions represented in The Community Discovered.

Again, this third year (1998), a new group of Community Discovered teachers participated in a week long summer workshop at The National Museum of American Art (NMAA) to review available works, learn methods of integrating these images into various curriculum areas, and plan for their classroom use. In addition, discipline based art training was conducted in a joint workshop with faculty from the Prairie Visions Institute. A variety of other workshops have also been held during the project, including the co-hosting of workshops focused on contructivism and technology with the Connections Challenge Grant during 1997 (a Nebraska Technology Innovation Challenge Grant). During 1998, to support overall project scalability, the summer training process was revised slightly to include greater training options for teachers, such as attendance at the Cox Multimedia Academy.

Like any innovative educational reform project, The Community Discovered Project is continually striving to keep up to date in its methods and approaches related to teacher training. In pursuit of this goal and building upon the ideas of the project leadership, the evaluation team hosted a "Blue Ribbon Panel" to advise the project on how to continue to support new personnel as the project continues to grow and evolve. This formative evaluation process took place on July 24, 1998, and came up with ten suggestions which can be found in Appendix L, along with the response from the project staff. A brief listing of these suggestions is given below.

The Community Discovered Project has held a variety of training activities during each of its three years of operation. These workshops were often conducted throughout the school year to assist teachers and students in learning to incorporate arts resources, the technology skills to do so, and the education/curriculum changes necessary to insure appropriate use of the resources in a constructivist teaching-learning environment. The shared vision statements, established from earlier sustainability meetings, reflect this strong collaboration in the project with cultural institutions.

Building upon their training experiences, project teachers are continuing the process of planning the integration of arts resources into classroom activities. Teachers are linked to museum and performing arts agency personnel and to other educators by use of a project facilitated listserv, which facilitates ongoing communication between project participants and provides additional information for the formative evaluation process. Docents at the museums also access email with the participating teachers and the project will eventually attempt to use desktop video conferencing. The information exchange amongst participants within this listserv is indeed interesting and reflects a true collaboration. The use of this listserv is evolving, and during the last two years of monitoring this communication process, the percentage of curriculum oriented messages (as opposed to technical or other content) has increased from 33% to 54% to 62%. See figure below.

 

The messages on this listserv reflect a true partnership process between the project museums and teacher participants, as represented by these example messages:

Listserv Message:

Hi Jenny!

We at MONA hosted a pilot educational program for an 8th grade English

class in February. Students spent the day working with art and writing

activities which dealt with use of seeing, feeling, and communicating.

They especially dealt with descriptive phrases in their writing and

discussion, as well as creating watercolor washes in different

techniques to integrate with their writing. The final activity of the

day was to write a group story or poem around the MONA sculpture "Spirit

Boat" by Patrick Rowan. We had very interesting discussions about this

piece and the themes of the boat and rebirth, and the students each

wrote one line for the piece. The learning experience was also a good

lesson in socialization skills as students put the 28 lines together to

produce their story. Presently this piece is a part of the Tolerance

Exhibition which MONA is hosting in the Hitchcock Gallery for children

on the lower level. Hope some of this strand is helpful for you!

 

Listserv Message:

I have just posted the teacher packet for the Charles Burchfield Collection. There are some interesting sections on history, literature, science and politic in relationship to his work that are worthy of perusal.

 

http://www.joslyn.org/teach/packets/burch/burch.html

 

Listserv Message:

Hi! My name is Erin and I am a docent at the NMAA. I did not find more on the story about Zeldis painting "Miss Liberty Celebration" while she was recovering from cancer but I did find background information that talks about the way in which she liked to use her experiences and particularly her childish recall as ideas for her paintings. In a painting called "Cherry Picking" she paints life as it "should have been" she says. Children are gobbling down fallen fruit without fear of punishment for gluttony or thievery. She uses lots of red and gay colors. In two other paintings called "Miss America" and "Beauty and the Beast" painted in l972 and 1973, she paintbrush becomes a magic wand that makes HER the Miss American and the princess in "Beauty and the Beast."

 

Zeldis's family was often on welfare in the post-depression years of Detroit ,but she has said that she felt very secure and surrounded by the love of her parents ,grandparents and relatives. Her many trips to the Detroit Institute of Art with her parents influenced her love of art and of symbolism and narrative in painting. 16th Century Flemish paintings shown at the Institute are filled with symbolism and narrative. In "Celebration" one of the figures represented-- along with Elvis --is her patron,Herbert Hemphill, who introduced Zeldis'work to the public. The convention of including the patron in the painting was used by Flemish painters.

 

Malcah Zeldis shows how important childhood memories and trips to museums are even when you are no longer a child but a grownup looking for ideas for paintings.

 

Hope to talk to you soon!

Erin

 

Listserv Message:

> To all Community Discovered participants - Greetings from

> the National Museum of American Art!

>

> The discussion on the list is very encouraging and it's still

> early in August. :-)

>

> We hope to facilitate integration of art and technology into

> participant units through a number of themes. The William

> H. Johnson work of last year will be a model on which we

> hope to build.

>

> NMAA will create Johnson-like sites for the following

> themes: Latino art, folk art, murals, public sculpture,

> performing arts, story telling. These sites will all be created

> in collaboration with Nora's office. New Media Initiatives

> has assigned a staffer for each theme to facilitate copyright

> clearance, digitization, etc. I will do folk art and post office

> murals. Daryle will do performing arts and story telling.

> Monica will do Latino art and public sculpture.

>

> We hope to organize "special interest groups" (otherwise

> known as focus groups) around these themes.

In addition to electronic communication occurring within the project, The Community Discovered Project is also using a quality newsletter to communicate with all participants and partners. This newsletter was new during the 1998 reporting period, and has been well received by project participants and partners. A sample copy of this newsletter is in Appendix M.

Constructivist pedagogy requires holistic thinking and the integration of disciplines. To promote such efforts and empower teachers to employ interdisciplinary constructivist planning and teaching, it was helpful to include a variety of art forms. Therefore, project activities have also included some limited activities with the performing arts, and the project is benefiting from collaboration with The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and statewide arts agencies, including The Omaha Community Playhouse through their educational touring groups and the apprentice program of The Playhouse (1997). Through arrangements with the Kennedy Center, visiting artists such as Namu Lawanga and the African Dance Cooperative (1997-1998) have provided professional development as well as student participation workshops on use of movement/dance within the curriculum.

A recent visit by the African-American storyteller Idu Maduli (1998) was particularly well received by students and teachers. This multidisciplinary activity was very student interactive, and teachers found that their students were very responsive to this highly constructivist model lesson. The following teacher and student quotes illustrate this enthusiasm.

Teacher and Student Quotes:

My students loved Idu! I had them write reflections after he was here and they would absolutely move you. They also had to come up with their own stories and act them out in front of the class. Here are just a couple of the wonderful comments they had to say.

 

"It was like Idu could see into my soul. He knew who I was by looking into my eyes."

"Idu was very respectful to me and I felt comfortable getting up in front of the whole class."

"I learned a lot about reputations, friendships, concentration, and the #1 word respect!"

"It was hard not to pay attention, with his interesting stories, creative animals, and meaningful morals."

"I thought I would look stupid up in front of the class acting, but I was wrong. I noticed that I didn't care what people though or said about me. Idu gave me courage!"

 

And the list goes on and on….Our sixth grade classes learned more than I could ever put into words. They were truly moved by Idu and would love to have him come back every day! The students will be gathering other tales from around the world to turn into skits and performing them to the class. This fit in perfectly into my unit on Celebrating Diversity! Thanks for allowing my students to have this incredible opportunity!!

6th Grade Teacher

During past activities in the project, teachers have also visited the Kennedy Center (during the summer of 1997) and worked with other teachers who are Kennedy Center Fellows to develop web-based, arts integrated curriculum. This collaboration has included on-line chats with teachers from throughout the nation and the world via the Kennedy Center website. Opera Omaha also provided a workshop entitled "Opera Goes West" (during the Fall of 1997) followed by performances of the touring group for students throughout the state.

For the visual arts, the NMAA continues to take a strong leadership role in initiating museum-related activities in the project and has been continuing to work through many technical and copyright constraints related to image scanning and publishing. Their web site, using feedback from participating teachers, has evolved into a model site and is an excellent example of the contribution such organizations can make to classroom learning.

[URL: http://www.nmaa.si.edu/]

The museum docents are also taking an active role in assisting teachers with their projects via e-mail and through participation in special interest groups. The Community Discovered has sought to encourage this participation through various training sessions offered to these important volunteers, such as a training session at the Westside Community Education Center Technology Lab in Nebraska in February of 1998.

As an outgrowth of the many teacher support efforts in the project, a variety of electronic special interest groups have been forming. These special interest groups (SIGs), are facilitated by project staff, site coordinators, or museum personnel, and they are linked to the museums through staff at the NMAA and other agencies. These SIGs have been actively forming throughout the project and have also met in small groups to collaborate in identifying resources and developing curricular units, all within a web based environment for communication support.

[URL: http://communitydisc.wst.esu3.k12.ne.us/HTML/sigs/]

These special interest groups include the topics described below.

Many of the electronic special interest group activities have been highly collaborative. For example, these 1998 collaborative activities initiated by the SIGs were particularly interesting:

• Public Sculpture and the Sheldon Museum
• The Storytelling web site at the National Museum of American Art
• Hispanic and Folk Art teacher workshops at the Museum of Nebraska Art
• Post Office Murals and the Nebraska Historical Society

The project is using these electronic special interest groups, as well as other collaborative and inservice activities, to support teacher networking and to help teachers find useful technology based models of constructivist, arts integrated curriculum. Many of the units produced by the project teachers reflect the centrality of the arts in curriculum development and the interdisciplinary links made to these works (see Unit Abstracts in Appendix G).

An electronic request form [URL:http://communitydisc.wst.esu3.k12.ne.us/HTML/intranet] is also being used by teachers to facilitate planning for the retrieval of arts resources. The partner museums and arts agencies are well integrated into the project. Specialists are employed at each of the art museums to work with teachers in researching resources and digitizing images and textual materials for access over the Internet. The web sites of these museums and the Kennedy Center contribute substantially to the project and are of the highest quality. They can be accessed easily through links on The Community Discovered site.

[URL http://communitydisc.wst.esu3.k12.ne.us/HTML/resources/].

Each of these museum based web sites are accessed continually from around the world, and the interest in these sites is expanding rapidly, as indicated by statistics from the Sheldon Art Museum.

Web Site Hits for Museum Resources (Example: Sheldon Museum): 1998 Jan 1997 July 1997 Jan 1998 Nov 1998 Total Files Served 21,985 165,442 520,093 1,586,770 U.S. Ed. Institutions Hits 1,340 5,299 80,043 219,934

The quality and utility of the web sites developed in the project is considerable.

The Community Discovered project World Wide Web site is accessible from http://communitydisc.wst.esu3.k12.ne.us, and from the linked Museum sites. Teachers from around the country have found this site useful, as illustrated by this quote from a teacher doing research on electronic portfolios.

Teacher Quote:

I visited your web site and was very impressed with your detailed instructions for students to create portfolios. Thank-you for sharing your work! I am developing a similar project for my language arts classes as part of my masters program (educational technology degree). Your page will be very helpful in my research."

In addition to positive teacher comments, The Community Discovered project World Wide Web site has received several official awards, as indicated by the following communication from the Northeast Regional Technology in Education Consortium:

Web Page Award (1997):

The advisory group responsible for developing the Web site for NetTech, the Northeast Regional Technology in Education Consortium wants to let you know that "The Community Discovered" is featured in this month's NetTech: Best of the Web in Educational Technology. Check it out at http://www.nettech.org/ NetTech searches the Web for new and exemplary sites in educational technology. Each month NetTech highlights 12 best educational technology sites.

The Community Discovered Project World Wide Web site has also been featured in the Innovator of the Month section of the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse. Such an award is related to solid relationship of the project to all disciplines, including mathematics and science.

Web Page Award (1997):

Your story is featured this month in our Innovator of the Month section of ENC Online. At the end of the month, it will remain on our site in our Innovator Hall of Fame. The direct URL for the Innovator Story is: http://www.enc.org/classroom/iom/iom1197/index.htm

The formative evaluation process targeting museum participation has included site visits, focus group analyses, questions on stakeholder surveys, and electronic monitoring of web site and listserv use. Surveys and interviews are systematically examining teacher perceptions of museum related activities, providing the project with additional formative evaluation information to help further refine their activities and the general educational utility of their web sites.

[URL: http://ois.unomaha.edu/cdeval/museums/].

Site coordinators are actively meeting with teachers to assist them in brainstorming ideas for upcoming units while also assisting them in locating and integrating appropriate arts resources into these units. Site Coordinators are also offering technical assistance to teachers in their search for images and other arts resources and in the utilization of these resources in the classroom with students. A major thrust of the site coordinators is to help the participants create a classroom atmosphere in which students are utilizing the arts resources and technology to create their own learning experiences.

The project continues to examine the most effective architecture for videoconferencing and distance education, particularly as it prepares for The Community Discovered ConferNet 99. Consistent with the original objectives of the project and with the expanded view of the arts, it is increasingly important for students and classrooms to be linked to outside resources in a way that promotes interaction on-line.

With rapid changes in telecommunications and technology application it is incumbent on the leaders involved with The Community Discovered to explore and make available the resources necessary for such access and connectivity. To this end, the project is working closely with representatives from cable TV, satellite systems (i.e.: NebSat), telephone companies, and telecomputing agencies to determine the optimal integration of resources and to develop the consortium resources needed to make videoconferencing and distance education available to participating sites.

A project initiative has already started in 1998 to develop interactive web based curriculum using ACTV's e-school application. Using webpush technology, e-school can provide web resources to various types of video feeds. It also has a built-in chat feature. The Community Discovered Project piloted the e-school application in the Spring of 1997 as part of a unique performance from the Kennedy Center to schools in Nebraska. The Kennedy Center broadcast a performance live via satellite. In Omaha, Cox Cable captured and rebroadcast this performance live on one of their educational channels. Students had access to e-school for supplemental web resources and to interact live with the performers via the chat feature.

The success of this interaction and the potential for development of curricula that can be distributed to a broad network of educators interested in using curriculum developed through The Community Discovered was encouraging. Further, with ACTV it is possible that a revenue stream for curricular projects might eventually be generated to further support the initiatives of The Community Discovered (see Appendix I for Press Release). In 1998, a pilot curriculum was developed using Georgia O'Keefe video and related web pages (pushed) to begin the developmental phases of the ACTV curriculum work.

Two advantages of the videoconferencing format include a shorter drive time for many of the teachers and the potential for teachers to invite administrators or other partner teachers to drop informally into the sessions. There are also disadvantages, such as technical problems and the perception that the videoconference does appear to cut down on some of the interaction between participants. The project continues to explore various videoconferencing and "face to face" formats as potential options for future training and meeting-related activities.

Objective 2.2 Museum educators at the Joslyn Art Museum, the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery and Sculpture Garden, the Museum of Nebraska Art, the National Museum of Wildlife Art, and the National Museum of American Art, will each develop at least one educational outreach program using appropriate technologies such as the Internet, kiosk, and interactive multi-media.

Activities	Timeline
Museums will develop and document outreach programs using CD/ROM and/or Internet.	1996-2000
Work with museums to keep them updated on what outreach programs would be most helpful to teachers (ie, math and science areas, multicultural connections)	1996-2000
Evaluation Plan
Structured interviews will be conducted with museum educators.	1997-2000
Documentation related to outreach programs and plans will be summarized.	1997-2000

Status

The Museum activities within The Community Discovered Project continue to be an impressive part of the project. Museum educators are continuing to expand their web sites with appropriate images and other resources while also refining their local process for gaining approval for the digitizing and sharing of images related to their local collections. These arts educators are also contributing to ongoing communication over the project listserv in order to help share lesson ideas and provide periodic suggestions to teachers. Participants and site coordinators also contribute information to museum educators regarding the images and other arts resources that would be the most desirable to digitize. Site coordinators are working with museum educators to provide participants access to educational packets and information regarding new exhibits and shows. Each participating museum is also continuing with project related plans for developing various kiosk, multimedia, and Internet-based outreach programs. The evaluation process related to this objective has included a stakeholder survey that included museum partners, the review of museum related written information and brochures, and the monitoring of listserv dialogue. Structured interviews and on-site visits have also been conducted during the three years of the project. In addition, the evaluation team has also used an interactive web page instrument and related assessment rubric to better examine the teachers understanding of how to integrate the art and technology resources available from the museums into the learning process and provide additional formative evaluation information.

Each partner museum is working hard at contributing to the overall Community Discovered Project and supporting educators through their museum resources. For example, the National Museum of Wildlife Art, a new partner in the grant, has already established a presence among educators in the project. Below is a description appearing on their web site related to their educational activities.

Many of the muesum outreach activities support a wide range of languages and learning styles and are comprehensive in their use of interactive web technologies. An example is the "webzine" available from the National Museum of American Art which uses web based technologies to help provide students around the world with access to selected museum resources, and instructional ideas related to interesting educational themes.

Another of the initial examples of the collaborative efforts within the project (1997) between participating museums and educators were the efforts associated with the exhibit of the works of William H. Johnson which was located at the Joslyn Art Museum. These works are from the holdings of the NMAA and were the centerpiece for a number of curricular units being constructed by participating teachers. In conjunction with this exhibit students also worked with docents from both the local and national museums via e-mail, to help develop student-docent tours of the exhibit, to assist both teachers and students in utilizing the educational packets prepared in conjunction with the exhibit, and for the effective integration of important performing arts works available from the Kennedy Center and local artists. The e-mail participation involving students was wide and varied and was eventually expanded to student-to-student interaction between schools. A review of these e-mail messages indicated significant motivation and interest by students, as reflected in the samples below-

Student E-mail Examples:

Dear Jeremiah,

Hi! How was your spring break? We don't get break until the

week after Easter. I'm doing my relief sculpture on recycling, I

think it is a very important subject. When we get back from spring

break we will be going to a museum here in Omaha to see a William H.

Johnson display. I think it will be fun, I can hardly wait. I hope

to hear from you soon! : ) ----Rachel

 

To Cheyenne Penn,

Hi. My name is Lauren and I am an 8th grader. I like to play

sports, shop for stuff and baby-sit. What are you doing for your

relief sculpture? I am doing a set of hands reaching together. I

have 1 brother and 1 sister. There names are David and Lindsay. I

also have 2 dogs, 2 cats, and 1 rabbit! My favorite food is any kind

of Chinese food and pasta. What is yours? Well talk to you later!

From Lauren :)

 

Dear Angie,

My name is Alexis Rothenberg. I'm really excited about this

docent program. I like drama, writing speeches, debating things,

sports and other things like those. I also like art because it

gives me a chance to express myself. I have picked two pictures.

The two pictures I picked are Dr. George Washington Carver and Harriet Tubman.

Goal 3: To enable educators to effectively use appropriate technologies for constructivist teaching and learning across the curriculum.

Activity II: Computer-Based Educational Strategies

Activity III: Professional Development and Support for Educators

Objective 3.1 Through collaboration with private companies, project educators will test and evaluate commercial technology tools (i.e. software packages) annually for applicability to classroom settings and instructional objectives.

Activities	Timeline
Educators will test, evaluate, and adapt selected commercially produced technology tools in classroom settings.	1996-2000
Electronic portfolio software packages will be examined and evaluated by teachers.	1996-2000
Assist with developing a software evaluation form for teachers to utilize.	1996-2000
Evaluation Plan
Documentation related to tool review and evaluation will be collected and summarized.	1996-2000
Observations will be conducted and summarized related to video conferencing activities.	1996-2000
Participant evaluation forms related to interactive video conferencing will be summarized.	1996-2000

Status

The Community Discovered has continued to put a careful emphasis on the use of constructivism in the development of lessons and units related to the project. To support such a focus, The Community Discovered has offered a variety of constructivist focused workshops, including many which blend telecomputing and other technology resources into the process. A particularly well received workshop was conducted by Dr. Judi Harris from the University of Texas at Austin entitled "Virtual Architecture Design and Directing of Curricular Based Telecomputing" during September of 1998. These sessions helped project teachers examine how to build lessons which were very constructivist oriented and were facilitated via the Internet.

Continuing to work closely with the Apple Computer Corporation, The Community Discovered has further incorporated purchased curriculum based computer software for Community Discovered teachers. These bundles of software included resources related to elementary, secondary, writing and publishing, mathematics, multimedia, and biology (with probes). The new telecommunications bundles were purchased in 1998 and are now in use. Many commercial software packages, such as Plan-It Teacher (examined in 1996 and 1997), which was developed by Morgan Media Incorporated for the British Columbia Ministry of Education, have been investigated and when appropriate incorporated into various Community Discovered activities. Additional software packages were investigated in 1998, and the software review process is continuing in 1999. Such project activities reflect the shared vision statements for what business partners will contribute to the project.

Objective 3.2 Each school site in participating districts will have access to technology resource persons available to assist in selection and application of appropriate technologies.

Activities	Timeline
Assist teachers in evaluating and selecting appropriate technologies.	1996-2000
Technology resource persons from participating districts, NDE, UNO, the ESU's and from commercial companies will be identified and consulted for technical assistance when needed.	1996-2000
Technology resource persons will conduct software and hardware workshops.	1996-2000
Evaluation Plan
A database of technology resource persons identified and their area of expertise will be maintained.	1996-2000
A log of workshops held, including date, topic, and presenter, will be examined for compatibility with project goals.	1996-2000
Survey of teachers about the use of technology resource persons will be conducted.	1996-2000

Status

The nineteen Nebraska Educational Service Units (ESU's) have assisted the project in various activities and continue to offer their support and participation. As part of this technical support network a database which includes names, addresses, phone numbers, and electronic mail addresses of numerous support personnel across the state has been distributed to teacher participants and will be placed on line in the near future. Each ESU related to the project sites is working with the districts to ensure effective connections of district buildings and classrooms to the Internet. In addition, the Winnebago School District, which serves a Native American Population, is continuing to receive some networking support directly from U.S. West.

Site coordinators are also continuing to provide technical assistance with hardware and software to teachers and their students. The site coordinators are offering personal training sessions on utilizing new software and hardware to participants. These sessions are being held at individual schools with participants who request the extra help. To enhance the formative evaluation process related to this technical support, the evaluation team is working closely with the Educational Service Units to blend state-wide evaluation tasks with those of The Community Discovered project. This has included the modification of a state distributed survey to include questions related to the goals of The Community Discovered project and the modification of a structured interview protocol already being used in debriefing technology resource persons in the state. For example, in the recent 1998 state distributed surveys, the use of Internet based art related lessons accounted for over 18% of the more than 632 teachers submitting favorite curriculum examples for use with the Internet from across the state of Nebraska.

 

Overall, The Community Discovered has been quite extensive in its planned and organized activities. The large number of inservice, dialogue, and other project related activities are reflected in the project calendar provided within the appendix of the report (see Appendix J).

Objective 3.3 By 2000, 300 Nebraska educators, including 60 educators of rural and urban disadvantaged students, will be trained on computer-based educational strategies and interdisciplinary constructivist curriculum to effectively integrate the arts and technology in all core subject areas.

Activities	Timeline
Participating teachers will attend summer workshops/institutes to prepare them in the areas of the arts, technology, constructivism, and interdisciplinary teaching utilizing the resources of partner agencies and organizations such as the NDE, NMAA, Kennedy Center, NAC, and state art agencies.	1996-2000
Teachers will review, analyze, and integrate art resources.	1996-2000
Workshops on curriculum integration, constructivism, electronic portfolios, integration of the arts, and technology will be held.	1996-2000
Provide teachers with workshops on creating slide shows, HyperStudio stacks, Web pages; interdisciplinary unit construction; data collection strategies (include UNO eval team); team building strategies; working with the Listserv; and accessing images from the Internet.	1996-2000
Site Coordinators will create a list of materials/software/hardware needs from teacher requests.	1996-2000
Evaluation Plan
Teacher growth plans will be reviewed and summarized.	1996-2000
Survey of practice of teachers to examine if and how new skills are being implemented.	1996-2000
Focus groups of educators will be conducted and summarized for feedback.	1997-2000
Case studies of 5 teachers who have participated throughout the project will be conducted.	1997-2000
Site visits to a sample of workshops will be conducted and summarized.	1996-2000
Selected videotapes of teacher lessons will be reviewed as submitted.	1997-2000

 

Status

The participants for year three of The Community Discovered project were selected from formal applications and resulted in eight teachers from Westside Community Schools, eight teachers from Grand Island Public Schools, four teachers from Lexington Public Schools two teachers from Winnebago Public Schools, eight teachers from the Omaha Public Schools and four teachers from the Nebraska City Public Schools. All applicants were notified by early March of their status, and those selected began project related professional development with an orientation meeting in April that included introductions to on-line resources related to the project, an overview of the project goals and objectives, and an introduction to the evaluation process.

Intensive training activities continued through the summer and academic year. Including the teachers involved in the Art and Technology Integration pilot project, a total of more than 350 teachers have now participated in training activities directly associated with the integration of art, technology, interdisciplinary learning, and constructivism to support curricular goals in The Community Discovered. These teachers are also working as mentors for numerous other teachers at their local sites and districts. Teachers within the project have formal partners with whom they team in constructing and teaching units throughout the year. Site coordinators are maintaining communications with these participants and their partners and assisting them in reviewing, analyzing, and integrating the Arts into their units.

Many of these training activities have been very extensive. For example, the following two professional development days in 1998 are good examples of the extensive range of topics offered in the areas of art and technology.

Project training activities have been routinely reported by the teacher participants as being very appropriate and adaptable to classroom use, and teachers have indicated that they believe their knowledge has increased in each of the key training areas. See table below.

Feedback from Teachers on Project Training Activities: 1998 Knowledge in: Interdisciplinary Teaching Art Integration Technology Constructivism Not Improved 15% 1% 4% 10% Somewhat Improved 50% 39% 50% 65% Considerably Improved 35% 60% 46% 25%

The project participants routinely complete formative evaluation surveys following any inservice session. These surveys are then quickly summarized and made available for staff review and planning. These formative evaluation reports are accessible over the web as well from the Evaluation web pages at http://ois.unomaha.edu/cdeval/index.html.

Many of the teachers in the project periodically acknowledge the effectiveness of the training sessions through e-mails to the staff or evaluation team, as represented by this e-mail quote from a teacher participant.

Teacher E-mail Quote:

I know that this isn't very timely, but….I wanted to say THANKS to the Community Discovered staff for putting together what was a great development session. Every minute of the day had gems to be mined for use in the classroom. THANKS! Just what I needed to get me really excited about starting my storytelling unit.

High School Business Teacher

One well experienced teacher in The Community Discovered had a touching quote which described the value of the project related to her daily teaching over the past few years.

Teacher Quote:

I have been teaching for 30 years and I am convinced that technology/computers are unquestionably the only tool in education that has made such a profound difference in my teaching-and student learning.

 

I have gained confidence in the technology component of my teaching due to the fact that District 66 and the Community Discovered has made training and workshops accessible. Many good lessons have surfaced, and it is essential for the district to continue the training and keep our technology on the cutting edge. The freedom and encouragement I have received to create a learning environment for my students is invaluable.

 

I have integrated art and technology with various subject areas into the curriculum. I have the freedom to create, explore, make errors, and continue to revamp the integration of my units. I organize the academic procedures step by step, experiment with the students, and continue to monitor, evaluate, and adjust. My units are a constant "work in progress".

Elementary School Teacher

The Community Discovered Project also worked often with the other Challenge Grants, particularly in the Western Cluster. The project has also worked closely with the other Nebraska Challenge Grants, including the co-hosting of a contructivist and technology training workshop in 1997 with the Connections Challenge Grant (also a Technology Innovation Challenge Grant in Nebraska). Sessions often involve impressive speakers, such as Dr. Jacqueline Brooks on constructivism, and Sue Pearson with Susan Kovalik and Associates. In 1998, Dr. Judi Harris also presented on educational telecomputing to the Community Discovered Project. A wide variety of training activities and support sessions have been held within the project, as represented by the list in Appendix J.

Project inservices are always focused on the four main topical areas: art, technology, interdisciplinary teaching, and constructivism. These areas are always carefully integrated, and all inservice activities focus on the project goals, as indicated by the inservice planning diagram below.

 

Site coordinators also are continuing to meet with participants on an individual basis to assist in completing personalized growth plans. These growth plans have been collected within an electronic web page format (see Evaluation Appendix B) and are closely monitored by the evaluation team [URL: http://ois.unomaha.edu/cdeval/growplan.html]. In addition, teacher participants also review their growth plans with a related reflection form (again see Evaluation Appendix B).

During the first three years of the Community Discovered Project, baseline videotapes of participant teaching were collected and summarized using an established rubric (see Evaluation Plan in Appendix B). During the next two years of the project (years 4 and 5), classroom observations will be conducted on a smaller sample of teachers using a teacher observation process established and validated by West Ed Laboratories (also in Appendix B). This teacher case study and electronic tracking approach will carefully examine a set of 16 teachers through project participation for a careful examination of teacher and student impact.

The teacher observation and case study analysis will be used to also examine whether new observations that are consistent with earlier observations of teacher changes related to technology and art integration. These earlier observations, made from teacher videotaped lessons, are now representing a baseline for the project, as indicated by the following graph of 1997 data, showing increases in art integration related to teacher lessons.

The participating teachers in the project are very aware of the importance of the ongoing training activities in the project and the incorporation of what they learn in these activities in the development of their curriculum modules. The project staff is very careful to match the training activities developed to the individual needs of the participating teachers within the context of the specific goals of the project. The formative evaluation process includes the consistent use of participant feedback surveys after each training experience (see example surveys in Appendix B).

The evaluation team is also continuing to use a World Wide Web based teacher log process, which asks teachers to answer prompted assessment questions at the end of periodic curriculum integration activities which are a direct result of The Community Discovered Project. Focus groups are also given each year to a sample of teachers to help collect representative perceptions of the project. Baseline and follow-up teacher surveys for The Community Discovered project have been analyzed, and representatives of the evaluation team have visited (and often documented) selected summer training activities, as well as ongoing activities in the classroom. Such evaluation site visits are now taking the form of a narrative overview. Such site visits have been routinely positive, as the evaluation team has documented an aggressive and active approach to the project by participating teachers. An example site visit document is provided in the Evaluation Appendix B.

In general, teacher quotes have reflected their enthusiasm and satisfaction related to the training activities within the project, as teachers witnessed the impact of their professional development in the performance of their students, as referenced by the selected teacher quotes below.

Art Integration and Learning:

Wow! What a wonderful experience my students had last week with the artist in residence, Julia Noyes. It was so neat to work with an artist of her talent. We found out we could also create beautiful works of art with her direction. She was so patient with us. Julia is not only a talented artist, but a great teacher as well. Thank-you CD for providing us this opportunity.

4th Grade Teacher

 

Higher order thinking:

Students enjoyed learning about Alma through the scrapbook

information and by looking at her work on the world wide web. The

works of art were varied but mostly abstract which I was pleased with

because 2nd graders shy away from abstract usually. Students seemed

to have a good feeling about abstracting their works and talking

about their work like they were abstract expressionists. For some

students this was the first time they used watercolors so there were

some frustrations to deal with but that happens with a new medium.

2nd Grade Teacher

 

Motivation and attention to task:

Most students were surprised to be able to incorporate art into

their science lesson. All completed the project and verbally shared

their pictographs with the rest of the class. The ones who appeared

to benefit most were the students who typically do not perform well

on paper pencil tasks. They seemed more motivated to produce than

would be otherwise expected.

10 Grade Biology Teacher

 

Collaborative learning and problem solving:

The technology facilitated the learning through motivation and

reinforcement of concepts. The students truly could hardly wait to

see their writing and images on our computer screen. They were so

very proud of their creations, both written and artistic. The

students reinforced their learning, time and time again, by

revisiting the Hyperstudio Stacks.

Now that my students have more experience with the computer, I

see them sharing their knowledge with others and applying a

contstructivist model with the area of technology. All by themselves

they have created Hyperstudio stacks with drawn images of creepy

crawlies. If they ran in a problem creating their Hyperstudio image

they contacted the person who just finished creating their image. It

worked.

8th Grade Social Studies Teacher

Objective 3.4 By 2000, project participants will demonstrate an increase in skills and knowledge in: (a) use of appropriate technologies, (b) constructivism, (c) integrating the arts across the curricula, (d) interdisciplinary curriculum development and instruction, and (e) use of electronic portfolio and other appropriate assessment strategies.

 

Activities	Timeline
Each participant will attend at least 80% of professional development activities offered.	1996-2000
Each participant will be assigned a technology mentor.	1996-2000
Each participant will be assigned a curriculum integration mentor from the Prairie Vision faculty.	1996-2000
NDE curriculum directors and specialists will provide assistance in core subject areas.	1996-2000
Each participant will use electronic portfolios and other appropriate assessment strategies to reflect on their progress.	1996-2000
Evaluation Plan	1996-2000
Survey teacher skills and knowledge.	1996-2000
Review attendance lists of professional development activities.	1996-2000
Collect lists of curriculum and technology mentors.	1996-2000
Examine electronic portfolios or other products.	1996-2000

Status

Teacher participants have received considerable in-service education, as represented by the project calendar in Appendix J. Additionally, resource texts on constructivist teaching, telecomputing, use of technology-based visual tools associated with the constructivist approach, museum catalogs and other reference materials for professional development are continually made available to each site. Site coordinators have also established local support activities, including local workshops for invited colleagues, informal brainstorming meetings, and individual question and answer sessions. The project in-service education process and site support activities continues throughout each academic year and continually focused upon reinforcing classroom integration strategies.

The evaluation team continues to survey participating teachers each year for information related to each of the areas of art, technology, constructivism, and teaching philosophy, and at the request of some teachers, review videotapes of project activities. In addition, surveys acquiring teacher feedback related to the summer training activities are also summarized, and teachers continue to share their ideas and suggestions spontaneously over the project listserv. Teachers appear to be benefiting from project related training in each of the target areas, as suggested by a summary of change related data below.

Cumulative Surveys (as of 1998):

• Over 55% of the teachers reported that their knowledge of constructivism had improved in The Community Discovered Project.
• Over 60% of the teachers reported that their knowledge of interdisciplinary teaching had improved in The Community Discovered Project.
• Over 58% of the teachers reported that their knowledge of technology had considerably improved in The Community Discovered Project.
• Over 72% of the teacher participants felt that their knowledge of art integration had considerably improved as a result of their involvement with The Community Discovered Project.

Video analysis (Baseline 1997 Data Only Being Followed with Teacher Case Studies)

• The videotape analysis showed a moderate degree of teacher change indicative of a constructivist learning environment in the areas of cooperative group learning, and a more minimal change in the way the teachers facilitated the classroom discussions and questioning strategies.
• The videotape analysis did not show much direct evidence of effective technology usage being facilitated in the classroom, although that was evident in student projects and products.
• The videotape analysis did not show much direct evidence in connections being established between art and the core subject, or the use of art to facilitate learning in the core discipline, although that was evident in student projects and products.

Cumulative Classroom and Field Observations (as of 1998):

• Classroom observations continue to reflect considerable teacher facilitated cooperative learning groups and active student engagement in the learning process.
• Teachers appear to be excited about various interdisciplinary aspects of the project, as well as the multicultural connections that many of their activities find within the project.
• Classroom observations continue to reveal a very high level of attempts at technology usage and excitement toward new technology applications, such as virtual reality, and the potential for student electronic conferencing.
• In general, classroom observations revealed a high level of art integration and attempts at DBAE education by teachers.
• Teachers felt, and often commented on the many ways that they had changed as a result of their participation in The Community Discovered Project.

More complete summaries of these activities are available through the evaluation related web site associated with the project [http://ois.unomaha.edu/cdeval/]

Objective 3.5 Project participants will successfully complete a continuous professional growth plan and evaluate their performance relative to that plan at least annually, and modify the plan to reflect their progress.

Activities	Timeline
Participant's growth plan will be submitted to The Community Discovered Office and progress reviewed by the evaluation team.	1996-2000
Site coordinators will review progress toward meeting the specific objectives of the growth plans and assist participants in updating the plan as a Continuous Growth Plan.	1996-2000
Evaluation Plan
Review of Growth Plans for compatibility with project goals.	1996-2000
Survey of teachers related to Professional Growth Plans.	1996-2000

Status

The Community Discovered project has continued to use an electronic Teacher Growth Plan form that all teachers in the project complete relative to their initial personal goals for the project. This process uses an innovative electronic form, which provides direct access and monitoring by the evaluation team. This Growth Plan form includes personal goal setting related to the areas of 1) tentative action plans, 2) data collection, 3) artifacts, 4) timelines, and 5) personal support needed. These growth plans are being reviewed by project staff and the evaluation team for the purposes of formative evaluation and for providing individual assistance to current participants in the project. The evaluation team is using an electronic database related to these growth plans to help track and document teacher activities and better examine the consistency of activities across the project.

Objective 3.6 Project participants will report attitudes towards the integration of the arts and educational tools in an interdisciplinary constructivist teaching approach.

Activities	Timeline
A survey of teacher attitudes and teacher interviews regarding integration of the arts and technology, adoption of constructivism, and interdisciplinary pedagogy will be completed each year.	1996-2000
Links with participants will be made throughout the school year as encouragement and support to their unit development.	1996-2000
Evaluation Plan
Attitude survey of teachers about the use of technology as an educational tool will be conducted and analyzed.	1996-2000
Teacher participants will be interviewed at the end of the academic year as an additional data source related to technology attitudes.	1996-2000

Status

Participating teachers in The Community Discovered project continue to be surveyed for their baseline and later attitudes and practices related to technology use. Evaluation work at the end of the academic year then compares later responses to initial survey responses to help examine teacher change. Teachers appear to be gaining considerable knowledge in the use of technology, particularly the Internet, which is reflected in both their use and attitude. The following survey question reflects how the use of the Internet by project teachers is expanding. Results were almost identical for the last two years of the project (1997 and 1998), and reflect improvement in the use of the Internet in the classroom.

 

Figure: Teacher Use of the Internet as Reported by Survey Questions

The use of the Internet in education is a large interest for Nebraska, which provides a fertile field for innovation related to continuing efforts and commitment of partners in The Community Discovered project. To illustrate this commitment to the use of the Internet, Nebraska was recently ranked first in the country in the use of the Internet in a national report completed by Education Week, with at least 64% of the schools are determined to have at least 50% of the teachers using the Internet in curriculum. Below is the rankings as associated with that report.

The Prairie Visions Consortium continues to help support the summer institute and operate as a strong partner in The Community Discovered project. The Prairie Visions Consortium includes over 90 public and private school districts in Nebraska. Related to the goals of The Community Discovered project, the consortium has also developed a computer assisted process for keeping track of alumni and has helped partners in The Community Discovered project link with each other in some of the initial project activities. Site coordinators are also keeping participants informed of workshops available to them which would enhance their skills and goals of the project.

Some of these partnership efforts have resulted in a new (1998) "artist in residence" process within the participating schools. For example, Julia Noyes conducted Watercolor workshops for a number of schools, and helped with site based mural development by students and teachers. The Prairie Visions Consortium has proved to be a valuable partner in accessing the considerable expertise in the arts being made available to participating teachers and schools in The Community Discovered project, through their periodic help in identifying various experts and resources.

Goal 4. To enable educators to implement effective integrated curricula incorporating the arts and technology.

Activity IV: Integrated Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment Strategies

Objective 4.1 Constructivist curriculum modules will be developed by each participant and implemented incorporating one or more of the following: (a) Internet digitized images and museum resources, (b) other Internet resources, (c) multi-media projects, (d) electronic portfolios, and (e) other computer applications. (Goals 1-4)

Activities Timeline Each teacher will develop one unit during the first year and two units in each successive year throughout the term of the grant. 1996-2000 The units will be indexed and placed on The Community Discovered world wide web server. 1996-2000 Participants will receive school year and summer support to work on their projects. First year maximum of 12 summer days, maximum of 8 sub-covered academic days Partners: maximum of 2 summer days and maximum of 3 sub-covered academic days Second year maximum of 10 summer days, and maximum of 8 sub-covered academic days Partners: maximum of 2 summer days and maximum of 3 sub-covered academic days Third year and beyond maximum of 5 summer days and maximum of 4 sub-covered academic days Partners: maximum of 2 summer days, Maximum of 3 sub-covered academic days 1996-2000 Participants and partners will work with mentors and museum partners 1996-2000 Teachers will communicate with museum staff in creating curriculum for their classrooms. 1996-2000 Evaluate the efficacy of the allotted time for participation in workshops and curriculum development and revise as needed to support goals. 1996-2000 Evaluation Plan Survey of teachers about the number of constructivist curriculum modules developed and implemented that use computer-based resources. 1996-2000 Review of project Web Sites related to constructivist curriculum 1996-2000 modules will be conducted by panel review. 1996-2000

Status

Teachers in The Community Discovered project are continuing to build their curriculum units and refine their lessons based on classroom use. A standardized format has been developed collaboratively in the project and will provide consistency in unit organization and presentation. Unit plans for the school year are completed by the end of each April with summer writing time to be spent on the revision and refining of these plans and the planning for upcoming units. The constructivist curriculum modules are stored on the project web site for retrieval and use by interested educators from around the world. In addition, teachers are asked to identify links from their units to the following:

• the National Goals for Education
• the National Standards for all disciplines
• the Nebraska State Frameworks for all disciplines
• District Outcomes for the participating districts
• the specific goals of The Community Discovered Project

This web based access is truly disseminating the project across the world, as represented by the following e-mail message from a visitor to the project web site.

E-mail from Web Site User:

.....I see there are a number of units that look promising. I like the idea of combining the more traditional subject areas with a serious art application. We're still struggling with integrating things in a consistent coherent manner. ..... We definitely have teachers interested in teaming with Stateside teachers. It just depends upon the project....

 

Ed Tulloch

Dalat School, Penang, Malaysia

Constructivist curriculum modules have been developed and have been made available by the teachers in The Community Discovered project. The unit plan structure was revised slightly in 1998 to encourage a more consistent teacher focus upon curricular "big ideas." This recent modification has worked well. The units are all consistently multi-disciplinary in nature and include a wide variety of individual topics as represented by these abstracts below:

Sample Unit Abstract Grade K-3:

 

Acceptance Through Patchwork

Early Childhood (k-3)

 

This unit is designed to be used during February, black history month.

The purpose of the unit is to promote the acceptance of various

individual differences through literature set in the present and during

historical times and set in various locations. The unit builds on the

trade book, The Patchwork Quilt. Connections are made to the artistry

and family history in handmade quilts, the geometry used in designing

quilt blocks, performing arts through dance, history through a look at

the lives of slaves through literature and information from the

Internet. The work of artist William H. Johnson is used for its

depiction of the heroes in black history and the everyday life of black people.

Sample Unit Abstract Grade K-3:

 

How the Environment Effects our Feelings

Early Childhood (k-3)

 

At the beginning of first grade, self awareness is a prominent study.

The skill of identifying and labeling feelings is a vital component of

self awareness, problem solvng, and conflict managing.

 

In art and literature for the reader's and viewer's reaction. The

students will learn to compare images and discuss their feelings

created by an artist's work. Students will become aware of the

correlation between experiencing feelings in art and literature and

feelings caused by changes in weather.

 

Sample Unit Abstract Grade 4-6:

 

Architecture

Intermediate (4-6)

 

Students will learn how things fit together by studying tessellations

and the work of M.C. Escher. They will then learn the terminology of

architecture, become aware of historical significance of architecture

in different parts of the world, and problem solve in creating own

piece of architecture out of cardboard boxes.

Sample Unit Abstract Grade 4-6:

 

Our Cultural Community

Intermediate (4-6)

 

Many communities in Nebraska are diverse in their populations. Our

towns and cities are composed of people from many different countries

and cultural backgrounds. In Winnebago, our village is composed the

same way but with the exception that the majority is Native American.

What makes our village different from other small communities in NE

Nebraska? How can the Winnebago cultural identity be shown?

 

The African-American artist, William Henry Johnson chose to show his

cultural community in South Carolina through his paintings of friends,

relatives and the people and their occupations. Using his images as a

springboard, how might the cultural heritage of our village be shown?

 

Students will access the Internet for research purposes and learn how

to save images from the Internet to a disk. They will also use the

video camera to save snapshots of local architecture to a disk.

Finally, they will create a HyperStudio stack depicting images and text.

Sample Unit Abstract Grade 7-12:

 

Exploring Nebraska Art and Architecture

Middle School (7-8)

High School (9-12)

 

The purpose of this unit is for students to: 1. Become aware of the artistic heritage available in the State of Nebraska. 2. Became aware of ways to study Nebraska Art on the Internet. 3. Find ways to analyze specific works of art and to communicate the analysis to others.

Sample Unit Abstract Grade 7-12:

 

Heroes and Heroines in Science: Dispelling the Stereotype

Middle School (7-8)

High School (9-12)

 

This unit is to challenge students to think of scientists as heroes and

heroines by dispelling the stereotypes of persons in scientific

careers. Cooperative group of students research the life and works of a

scientist and (through the use of the library and the World Wide Web)

produce a multimedia portfolio of art, poetry, songs, and newspaper

articles to honor the accomplishments of nontraditional scientists.

Objective 4.2 Participating teachers will effectively use one or more computer-based education strategies in their classrooms. Strategies will include Internet resources, electronic portfolios, Hypertext, multimedia, and others.

Activities	Timeline
Site Coordinator will work with each participating teacher to develop units.	1996-2000
Site Coordinator and evaluators will provide feedback.	1996-2000
Art agencies will provide assistance and resources.	1996-2000
Evaluation Plan
Attitude survey of teachers about the use of constructivist curriculum modules.	1996-2000
Videotapes filmed by partners of samples of lessons to observe teaching and student learning in integrated curriculum activities will be analyzed.	1996-2000
Site visits/teacher interviews to observe implementation of sample integrated constructivist curriculum will be conducted.	1996-2000
Focus groups of students involved in integrated constructivist curriculum will be conducted.	1996-2000

Status

The Community Discovered is very aggressive in its teacher inservice and training activities. An extensive and focused training process, including extended summer workshops, is being used with participating teachers. Training has included fundamental training in technology, art, interdisciplinary teaching, and constructivism topics, and complement the overall integration goals of the project. Project teachers have also received equipment and computer software bundles related to the project and are continuing to plan and develop their particular curriculum modules. The site coordinators are continuing to provide additional individual training and mentoring activities at each site as necessary. Site coordinators are meeting with participants and their partners to help develop and implement the unit plans. Through use of the listserv, teachers are maintaining communications links with not only other teachers in the project but also with the museum contact people. Site coordinators are also assisting in such activities as the videotaping of selected events, and the capturing of archival data from a variety of sources and lessons.

The evaluation team continues to survey the teachers for yearly information on their experiences and teaching philosophy, and examine the observational or videotaped samples of the teachers activities in the classroom. Site visits occur yearly with a sample of the teachers, and selected teachers participate in structured interviews and focus groups relative to the formative evaluation process associated with this objective.

Objective 4.3 By 2000, the project will produce a comprehensive system of world wide web pages containing links between appropriate resources and the curriculum units developed by participating educators.

Activities	Timeline
The Site Coordinators will identify links to art resources, curriculum integration units, and assist teachers to integrate these in all subject areas.	1996-2000
The Computer Specialist will coordinate the development and integration of the web site across all aspects of the project.	1996-2000
The Project Site Coordinator, working with the Computer Specialist and museum resource personnel, will help refine the unit format.	1996-2000
The Art and Technology Coordinator and the Computer Specialist will develop and compile a database of units and art resources.	1996-2000
Project resources will be linked to other resources and organizations accessible on the world wide web.	1996-2000
Evaluation Plan
A review of project World Wide Web sites for lesson quality and appropriateness to project goals will be conducted.	1996-2000

Status

The Community Discovered prides itself on its model use of web based technologies for project support and evaluation activities. The project continues to operate its own comprehensive and impressive World Wide Web site, which is available at:

http://communitydisc.wst.esu3.k12.ne.us/

The web site structure was refined in 1998, to include the following main categories:

• ConferNET
• Curriculum Units
• Resources
• Special Interest Groups
• Intranet
• Calendar
• Information
• Comments
• Evaluation Team Website

The project World Wide Web site is of high quality and is continuing to evolve. It provides access to all of the project curriculum modules, general project information, various project initiatives, and links to a project World Wide Web site related to evaluation information. In addition to access from a link on the general Community Discovered project page, the evaluation information for the project can also be accessed directly at:

 http://ois.unomaha.edu/cdeval/

This page includes links to all of the evaluation information, including the evaluation design, sample instrumentation, analysis of various data sets, and formal evaluation reports (such as this one). Teachers also use links to this evaluation page to provide spontaneous formative feedback to the project after conducting related classroom activities. In addition, this self-reflection process provides an "electronic journal" related to individual teacher perceptions and thoughts as they implement classroom lessons associated with the project.

As well as the World Wide Web pages focused directly on The Community Discovered project, the project has also worked closely with ARTnet Nebraska, where a more general list of resources and links is being maintained and can be accessed at:

URL: http://artnet.nde.state.ne.us/

ARTnet Nebraska is an on-line resource maintained by the Nebraska Art Teachers Association in cooperation with the Nebraska Department of Education and the Nebraska Arts Council to help support the arts as a core subject in the K-12 curriculum. It is an important link in The Community Discovered project's web site. The ARTnet Nebraska web site also includes links to The Getty Educational Institute for the Arts and the Kennedy Center's ARTSEDGE, which provide not only general lesson plans and other curriculum resources but also a working collaboration resource for The Community Discovered teachers.

Goal 5: To create a national network of educators to support the development and implementation of appropriate learning strategies integrating the arts and technology with other core subject areas.

Activity V: Nationwide Community for Art and Technology Integration

Objective 5.1 The Community Discovered Web Site will be in place to provide curriculum models, museum resources, and continuing opportunities for information sharing, collaboration and support among educators.

Activities	Timeline
The Community Discovered Web Site will link participants and experts.	1996-2000
The web site will provide links to curriculum modules, digitized images, and other museum resources.	1996-2000
The Art and Technology Coordinator and Computer Specialist will support The Community Discovered Web Site, The Community Discovered listserv, and project related distribution lists.	1996-2000
NMAA Education Department and Prairie Visions will communicate with the Community Discovered Staff in creating summer training opportunities for teachers that can meet the objectives of the Community Discovered Grant.	1996-2000
Evaluation Plan
Electronic hits related to the use of ARTnet Nebraska resources by Web Page resources will be summarized.	1996-2000

Status

Outreach and dissemination are important goals of the Community Discovered process, and they occur systematically and regularly through both the project as a whole and through individual partners. The project is beginning to prepare a formal monograph of "lessons learned", which will be written by individual partners, published within the last year of the project, and will operate as a comprehensive document for project replication and communication.

Lead teachers from The Community Discovered are also conducting some of their own outreach activities, due to the high visibility of the project, as reflected by this teacher quote.

Teacher Listserv Report:

 

I have been interviewed by the South Central Regional Technology in Education Consortium, because I had presented information about using the Internet, and how it was done. The article does include links to the Community Discovered site, as well as the NMAA.

http://www.4teachers.org/feature/foster/

There is also a copy of the first lesson I did with the Community Discovered folks.

 

The South Central Regional Technology is located at Kansas State, and Nebraska is one of several states that are a part of this group.

3rd Grade Teacher

Some of the outreach activities for the project are also being facilitated through an ongoing collaboration with ARTnet Nebraska, which is the electronic network created by Prairie Visions and The Nebraska Department of Education. This network is operating successfully as a listserv and World Wide Web site with electronic links to and from The Community Discovered Web site. ARTnet Nebraska is also a useful source of technical assistance for participants in The Community Discovered project, and the evaluation team is documenting its use and effectiveness as a resource to project participants through the use of both teacher survey and electronic data collection procedures.

In addition to formal outreach to educators, artists, and other professionals across the country, each school district is also reaching out to their local communities through use of street fair process. Every year, the participating school districts each host a showcase of what has been done in the project and invite the local community to participate. These have been well received by the community at each location and will continue to expand and evolve.

Objective 5.2 Cross-state partnerships will be encouraged to support replication and enhancement of appropriate activities.

Activities	Timeline
Electronic portfolios will be available on-line so the resources can be shared with other Technology Innovation Challenge Grants and other interested projects.	1996-2000
Evaluation Plan
Interviews related to cross-state partnerships will be reviewed.	1996-2000
Documents related to presentations and partnerships will be reviewed.	1996-2000

Status

As a solid cross partnership activity, the project continues to have and develop a close working relationship with the Western Cluster group of the Technology Innovation Challenge Grants within the western portion of the United States. Within this partnership, The Community Discovered project is working with the other challenge grants to refine project strategies and the project evaluation process. Relationships are also developing with other projects outside of this cluster group, through both electronic and personal communications between the project and other interested individuals and institutions. As these personal contacts expand, additional electronic conferencing activities will be held to solidify the evolving partnerships. Electronic feedback for use in the evaluation process is also being solicited through web page forms, listserv participation, and electronic mail to document the potential uses by other states.

Of special note is the ongoing partnership with the second Nebraska Technology in Education Innovation Challenge Grant, entitled the Connections Project. These two Nebraska Challenge Grant projects are continuing to work together on a regular basis to plan collaborative activities when appropriate or to share related inservice costs. A third Nebraska Challenge Grant is now also beginning collaborative activities and discussions. In addition, outside of Nebraska, the evaluation team of the Community Discovered Project has collaborated with the Triton Project in San Diego, California, and has authored a joint paper on problem based learning.

Associated with dissemination of the project, the project has also been aggressive in making presentations related to the project across the country. Major staff presentations include the following: The Technology and Teacher Education Conference, 1998; The Telecommunications in Education Conference, 1998; The Midwest Internet Institute 1998; The Nebraska Educational Technology Association Conference 1998; The National Educational Computing Conference 1997; The Nebraska Educational Technology Association 1997; The Midwest Internet Institute 1997, The ArtsEdTech Conference 1997; The Nebraska Association for the Gifted Conference 1997; The International Problem Based Learning Conference 1997, in Sydney, Australia. In addition to these more formal presentations, the project has also contributed to numerous other guest presentations, panels and dissemination activities at a variety of other conferences, meetings, and seminars.

Objective 5.3 As a pilot cross-state partnership, The Community Discovered project and other projects will collaborate to expand on an effective integrated project in which teachers and students within the project will have the opportunity to communicate electronically with other teachers and students.

Activities	Timeline
Students will share and discuss their work with peers using the Internet, within a Virtual Conference process.	1996-2000
Evaluation Plan
Structured interviews and surveys of pilot cross-state partnership participants will be conducted.	1996-2000
Student work published on the Internet, related to the project, will be reviewed for relationship to project goals.	1996-2000

Status

As with all cross-state partnership activities, to keep costs low, activities related to establishing alliances focus primarily on the conference based meetings, formal publications, and the ongoing use of electronic based collaborations using electronic mail, listserv, and Internet based communication.. Additional activities related to cross-state partnerships are also embedded in the other project objectives as a natural outgrowth of each project objective.

The Community Discovered Project also makes careful use of its advisory board, which consists of a wide mix of professionals across the country (See Appendix F). This board met in April of 1998, and the following suggestions from the board were used in planning activities for the following 1998/1999 school year.

The project has been very aggressive in participation at yearly national and regional conferences. These have included presentations at the National Educational Computing Conference, the Technology in Teacher Education Conference, the Telecommunications in Education Conference, and American Educational Research Conference. In addition, the project is beginning to publish and prepare articles related to the project with an article published in Art Education, and another article being submitted to Information Technology and Teacher Education.

In addition, formal collaboration activities with the second Nebraska Challenge Grant project have enhanced cross-state sharing. It is also planned that in the upcoming years of The Community Discovered, additional districts might be "virtually involved" through on-line participation. This could involve use of curricular units with systematic collaboration between teachers in the Community Discovered Project and their "on-line partners." Through such collaboration, units would be integrated, evaluated, refined and further enhanced through the process. Further, the work with developing such curricula, such as evolving plans with ACTV's "e-school" network, will promote opportunities for expanding connections among teachers, dissemination of project resources, additional sources of evaluation through stakeholder feedback, and even potential sources of revenue to assist in sustaining the Community Discovered Project beyond the life of the grant.

IV. Summary

It is said that a good project will always continue to grow and evolve, and "The Community Discovered: The Search for Meaning Through the Integration of Art and Technology in K-12 Education" is now well established, growing systematically, and evolving fully in its third year of formal activities. The project has embraced advanced information-based technologies and has refined its plans as technology-based applications continue to evolve with emerging capabilities, such as new capabilities on the World Wide Web. The project is building upon its earlier successes, upon a strong organizational foundation, and with an aggressive commitment by its many partners.

The Community Discovered project has already provided to its teachers substantial training in technology, the arts, interdisciplinary teaching, and constructivism. This training has included extensive summer workshops involving faculty from the Prairie Visions Institute and The National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. The NMAA continues to provide significant leadership and ongoing support to museum-related goals of the project, and the ongoing work on electronic images by the project's group of museums continues to provide a rich resource for the integration of art into other disciplines via the Internet. In addition, the project is drawing upon successful and extended external collaboration through its ongoing partnerships with national institutions. These national institutions provide insight, a broad perspective, and rich resources for the project. Additionally, the linkages forged between these national agencies and our state agencies have already been highly successful. Communications among curators and directors are now routinely occurring on-line and through periodic visitations. The museum and educational personnel have begun to develop common interests through their work with Community Discovered, that have often resulted in a "joining of forces". Such outcomes and collaborations are critical to the ongoing development and sustainability of the project. Further, such national-state linkages have been enhanced and reinforced by new partners being added to the state level to provide additional leadership and support for the related project objectives.

The Community Discovered project is committed to staying on the "cutting edge" of educational technology use, and the project is taking full advantage of the evolution of the Internet. In particular, the project is making strong use of the World Wide Web within all project activities. The World Wide Web is also be the basis for the evolving "portfolio" representing the project, so that educators from around the world can share in the information, knowledge, and resources generated by The Community Discovered project. Project activities will also continue to strive to make use of video-conferencing, listservs, telecommunications available on the Internet, and other emerging delivery systems. Cross-state partnerships are evolving, and new technologies will allow for the pursuit of variety of collaborative activities, such as the student virtual conference, which would be impossible to deliver in any other way.

Goals and objectives in the grant continue to integrate the four strands that we are using in all areas of the project. These four important strands are: 1) the arts, 2) technology, 3) constructivism, and 4) interdisciplinary planning and teaching. These four critical areas are systematically integrated and addressed in the many professional development activities for our participants and will continue to guide us in achieving the mission statement of the grant.

The evaluation process is fully integrated, and is evolving and expanding with new interactive capabilities on the world wide web. These evaluation activities draw upon comprehensive data collection procedures that use both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Evaluation work continues to provide useful formative evaluation information to the project, and helps represent the project to various stakeholders. Teachers benefit from reflecting on their own teaching and are providing important feedback information over the listserv and in surveys and personal interviews. Classroom visitations and observations are also conducted. The evaluation team's web site also contributes to the historical and portfolio process which is representing the project and assists in project related dissemination to other projects and educators, such as the project evaluation plan, developed instruments, data summaries, and electronic copies of formal reports. This page is also being used as a data collection tool, focused on ongoing electronic feedback from participants. Finally, work continues on systematic longitudinal evaluation processes which will help document the overall model of the project and will result in a "lessons learned" monograph within the last year of the project.

As The Community Discovered project moves forward, perhaps most importantly, there continues to be a real team effort underway by all stakeholders in the project to positively effect the learning environment for all students. This teamwork is growing and becomes more solid during each successive year of the project. As any project on the "cutting edge", it is expected that The Community Discovered project will continue to evolve as new educational technologies and understandings become available. The project is indeed a comprehensive one, and its use of a systematic implementation process and the incorporation of a careful evaluation plan are no doubt critical components in its effectiveness to date and promise of effectiveness in the future. The strong and full commitment by all partners to contribute to the overall success of the project will no doubt continue to provide a natural catalyst for success as the project strives to implement its very aggressive set of goals and objectives.

Appendices:

Appendix A: Budget Information

Appendix B: Evaluation Plan Details

Appendix C: Sample Professional Development Unit

Appendix D: Sustainability Planning Report

Appendix E: Private School Accessibility Plan

Appendix F: Project Advisory Boards

Appendix G: Unit Abstracts

Appendix H: Inservice Training Institute Examples

Appendix I: ACTV Plans and Press Release

Appendix J: Project Calendar of Events

Appendix K: Virtual Student Conference Information

Appendix L: Blue Ribbon Panel Results

Appendix M: Sample Community Discovered Newsletter

Appendix N: News and Public Relations Excerpts

Appendix O: Museum Summit Information