Re: Legacies- community, le
Lowell Herr (herr@catseq.catlin.edu <herr@catseq.catlin.edu>)
Tue, 20 Feb 1996 08:25:18 -0800 (PST)
_______________________________________________________________________
TEECH "LEAVING A LEGACY: Sustaining a Project After the Funding Ends"
Sent by: Lowell Herr <herr@catseq.catlin.edu <herr@catseq.catlin.edu>>
_______________________________________________________________________
Brian,
In the questions below, are you asking about Project PHYSLab, or are you
asking about how the PHYSLab teachers use the telecommunications system?
If the former, (and computer interfacing is our main project), we now have
80 teachers prepared to use our labs with their students. Thus far,
PHYSLab teachers use or add 12 new labs to their program with another 12
- 13 revised. What this means is that teachers who take our workshop are
nearly totally revising their lab programs. The teachers have used this
material with over 20,000 students - and counting.
The computer network is really just a subset of the main project. I got
interested in such communications back in the late '80's when I was
working with you at LabNet. So you should take some credit. <g> As you
will recall, I was very frustrated with the clunky front ends we needed
to deal with during those early years. And I thought there was a much
better way to proceed so I set up one of the original IBM systems (forget
the name but it was something like PINet). There was almost no action on
the system so I moved over to FIDONET. Immediately, action on my BBS
picked up. From there I added K-12 Net. When our school became an
Internet site, I looked around for BBS software that would link into the
Internet. I began with software called TBBS with the promise I would
become a test Internet site for their software. This did not pan out so
I searched around until I located Galacticomm and now run a Worldgroup
site where I have both a BBS and Web site operating. You can access this
system with a telnet physlab.catlin.edu. The Web site (to be revised
this summer) is: http://physlab.catlin.edu. We plan to put the Web Home
Page on its own computer and the address will become,
http://www.physlab.catlin.edu.
Behind all this work with different telecommunications software has been
my desire to provide a place where physics teachers could gather to share
teaching ideas and where they could come for lab ideas. The latter is
more successful although about every six weeks, I do set up a
telecommunications conference where I will announce to about 100 physics
teachers that we will have a chat on the BBS at a particular time. My
system is currently set up to handle 26 simultaneous users and we have
not exceeded that amount. In the summer of 1997, I will beef the system
up to handle 60 users as we will have that many teachers taking the 1997
PHYSLab workshop.
I'm not sure my long-winded answer really answered your questions.
Lowell Herr
Project PHYSLab
The Catlin Gabel School
Portland, OR 97225
On 20 Feb 1996, Brian Drayton wrote:
> _______________________________________________________________________
> TEECH "LEAVING A LEGACY: Sustaining a Project After the Funding Ends"
> Sent by: "Brian Drayton" <Brian_Drayton@TERC.EDU <Brian_Drayton@TERC.EDU>>
> _______________________________________________________________________
> Reply to: RE>>Legacies: community, leadership, learning
>
> Lowell, I have another question for you, in a rather different vein. My
> questions arise from thinking about the very distributed nature of your
> network, which is clearly an exciting model.
> What is (are) the principal result(s) of your project? How have you
> evaluated it? Do you have demographic information about participation (types
> of participation, frequencies,length of memberships, etc.)? You see the
> kinds of things I am curious about.
> You have probably put all those things in a report someplace, which I
> should have read., so I don't want you to *answer* this here. What I am
> really interested in is what structures are in place for the network to learn
> from experience and change as a result of that learning?
> Thanks!
> -- Brian (brian_drayton@terc.edu <brian_drayton@terc.edu>)
>
> --------------------------------------
> Date: 2/17/96 8:50 PM
> To: Brian Drayton
> From: TEECH-Legacy@hub.terc.edu <TEECH-Legacy@hub.terc.edu>
> _______________________________________________________________________
> TEECH "LEAVING A LEGACY: Sustaining a Project After the Funding Ends"
> Sent by: Lowell Herr <herr@catseq.catlin.edu <herr@catseq.catlin.edu>>
> _______________________________________________________________________
> 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
>
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> Date: Sat, 17 Feb 1996 17:45:32 -0800 (PST)
> From: Lowell Herr <herr@catseq.catlin.edu <herr@catseq.catlin.edu>>
> Subject: Re: Legacies: community, leadership, learning
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