Re: Legacies: community, leadership, learning

Lowell Herr (herr@catseq.catlin.edu <herr@catseq.catlin.edu>)
Sat, 17 Feb 1996 17:45:32 -0800 (PST) 

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TEECH "LEAVING A LEGACY: Sustaining a Project After the Funding Ends"
Sent by: Lowell Herr <herr@catseq.catlin.edu <herr@catseq.catlin.edu>>
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Hi Billy,

Lowell Herr calling in from the West Coast with a few comments down 
through your message.

> Some of the issues that have come up for us include:
> 
> (1) How can we develop mechanisms to sustain the online *teacher 
> community* that we and 1000+ teachers have worked so hard to build?

To keep teachers connected and coming back to the "beehive" one needs 
interesting discussions and I find teachers want usable teaching 
information.  We are trying to provide both at our site where the focus 
is on physics.  As yet, I have not attracted biology and/or chemistry 
teachers.  We are beginning to build a database of lab ideas with an 
emphasis on MBL types of experiments.  There are a few tests on the 
system but these are in protected files so students do not have access.  
By the 1st of August, we hope to have another 30 labs posted to the system.

> Question: What are other models that have been successful for cost 
> sharing and sustainable funding?

We do not provide any outside funding support.  There are many teachers 
who can call our system directly but most telnet into the Bulletin Board 
or Web Site.  The address is physlab.catlin.edu for both the BBS and Web 
Home Page.

> > (2) How can we sustain the level of *teacher leadership* we 
have > developed?

I think this is very difficult and one must accept some turnover in 
leadership roles.  I am the primary motivator on our system.  I use it to 
communicate with over 100 physics teachers, Catlin Faculty, and my 
current students.

Do you forsee the time when 
teachers will be able to telnet into the system and participate in the 
discussions?  Maybe this is possible right now.

Lowell Herr