AHCI Meeting

(what I'm going to do is to post this during the meeting, and then I'll take the file down and just email it to you....I don't want to leave it on the site long enough for Google to find it...but that won't happen for a day or so, so we're fine for today)

(I don’t get here until 11:15, but the meeting started at 9am, and they've already had the "reports" from the 4 projects describing what they're doing. Ugh. Missed this. What remains for the rest of the day is the discussion of details from CPB re. contracts, expectations, details; and the discussion from Andy H and me re. the expectations for evaluation and "student impact." Turns out that Andy is going to stay stranded in Providence...his plane is on indef hold...so he'll probably come in via phone later. Ugh.)

The projects represented seem to be -

• Mission America
• Liberty Under the Law
• Young History Detectives
• American Dynasties

The agenda for what I missed...

9:00            Introductions & Welcome - Greg Diefenbach

9:15            Background on AHCI -- Origins and Goals, Q&A - John Prizer

9:30            Grantee Project Presentations -- 20 minutes for each prototype developer to describe the project, articulate its innovations & educational effectiveness, and sketch its particular challenges, Q&A

10:50            Break

(that's what's happened for the previous 2.5 hours that I missed. And now for the live meeting....)

Jeff Brewlow - the CPB Lawyers

Attorney for CPB working with these projects. He talks about how these projects are structured legally and contractually for the purposes of getting paid (not an issue for us). He's followed by another CPB lawyer who has done all sorts of show biz Hollywood stuff. She wants us to know that. Riiiiiight. Basically, these are the money folks. None of this is really too important for us. A lot about "standard terms and conditions" blah blah blah.

Someone asks how much a project gets (of their total award) upon signing. The answer is "we haven't actually set an amount." They want to base it on cash flow. But think that it may be about 50% of the total award. They say that the goal is to "keep just slightly foward funded." I guess the idea is that the projects need to tell CPB what they need and then CPB will figure it out for each individually.

There's some confusion as to what Andy H does (this comes up as projects start to worry the details on the contracts and deliverables). It's made clear that he's the PROJECT MANAGER for the "Initiative Manager" and that the Initiative Manager is WGBH. It seems that the problem (such as it is) may be that projects are worried about just who to trust as far as details...Andy, CPB, the lawyers, etc. I guess I can see the problem.

Two important people to note here are Carrie Hayes (the Project Manager at CPB) and John Prizer (the VP at CPB who's Carrie's boss)

Timeline Discussion

CPB says that they hope that the projects can start to work with schools during the 2008/2009 school year. There are issues here about the timing of when projects finish their prototypes and when they can test them, and when CPB can evalaute the outcomes. They're starting sooooooo late that everyone is worried about this.

It's said that it makes sense for indiv projects to work their project timelines with Andy H and then to communicate that to CPB for the purposes of settting up deliverable schedules. I guess that's the big issue here...people are worried about getting paid (or not) for deliverables when everyone is working on slightly different timelines. Also they are all hustling for and assuming that they are going to get $ in "Phase 2"...and in a way it seems like many of them aren't really planning on having any real product until they get notified of this Phase 2 $ (!!!!!!! that's a big problem!). They seem to have missed the message that they have to have a successful program, running in pilot, in order to even be considered for Phase 2! (and now, they're getting the word for that....these folks are hard for me to read. Not educators, but sort of hardened "media" types...so I think they bring a degree of hustle to this that I've not seen with teachers who are generally just happy to get anything. I think that these folks are all about the negotiation. Hummmmm.)

Michael Fragale - CPB's Education Director

This guy used to work for PBS Adult Learning Service (I know these folks from back when I was in KY!)

"How can you connect content to the communities that need that content?" He says that helping answer this quesiton is his division's job. WOrk falls into 4 categories. Fund content (e.g, developing shows...have focused on young children, but are now moving to STEM); Helping stations use content in schools/homes (helping stations sustain "the whole enterprise of the station" via educational content); Conducting evaluation and measuring the impact of programming/workshops/etc. (are interested in developing "common measures"); Leadership (standards, frameworks, competitiveness, Ready to Learn initiative...ED funding for improving reading skills.

Donnelle Blubaugh and Kristen Taylor from PBS

They been added to the agenda. Wants to talk about the "Education Landscape" (eeeewwwwwwwww). Talking about social networking and other new "social media" stuff that she feels is what's defining the education landscape. (Sadly) she seems to be one of the handfull of people here who actually spends time talking to teachers.

Kristen is talking about something called a "Mash Up" - 'One of the real exciting things that we're talking about. The sexy stuff from General Audience that we want to show teachers.'"

The goal here seems to be to convince the projects to "secure the rights" to the things they develop so that PBS can market them to a wider teacher audience. Oh, I get it.

Wow....it's getting to be very clear that all of this is pressaged on being able to state that this stuff being developed is "effective" We have a pretty pivital role....

Susanne Stefanac - American Film Institute

She works with some kind of "Lab" at AFI. Their charge is to pick new projects for prototyping. It seems that the idea is to find new media concepts and then to figure out how they can be used for...... uh, I donno......

Cool! This lady has worked with Jello Biafra (lead singer from the Dead Kennedys! ).

It seems that her task will be to watch these projects to see what if anything comes out of them that could be exploited in her Lab.

LUNCH!

Kelly Schrum - Center for History and New Media (George Mason Univ.)

Here to talk about ed tech and history. Questions how can we tap into students'/public's interest in history...when they also perceive that history is "boring." Thinks that the problem is that how history is taught is via lecture, etc. It's boring. So, how can we bring new tools to the teaching of history? What role can technology play in connecting students to this.

This is useful in that she's talking about historical thinking skills and habits of mind.

She builds a good basic case for the fact that teachers really aren't able or equipped to be able to teach history in ways that truly engage students. They don't have the content skills, and don't have the resources (content and tools) to reach kids. But kids are engaged in a world of tech that doesn't really relate to how teachers teach history (or I might add to lots of other subjects....and in fact this makes me think that there's a marketplace problem here. The marketplace creates tech tools that are attractive to kids that teacher can then try to hijack for their own purposes....but WHY does it have to be that teachers hijack commercial tools? Why can't the marketplace make tools for education first? 'Cause there's no money in it!...and that's a social values thing. Ugh.)

Jamestown Interactive is cited as a game that illustrates how some of this might work, but that it's definitely flawed.

What are the educational outcomes of what we're setting out to do? Do we just want them to know facts (e.g, when was the DoI signed?) or do we want them also to know the context of the time? (e.g., that the ideas in the DoI were in common circulation at the time, but hadn't come together as they did in 1776.?)

Donnelle talks about a session called "The Death of Schools" at the Alan November conference she went to last week. Another one of these sessions about the need for teachers to "embrace the tools" that are interesting to kids or that we'll lose kids. She also says that one of the themes in this conf was that tech developers are learning "not to go to schools" with their products as schools are "dead" to learning how to use or adopt the tech. Ugh.

(Then they move into Q/A)

Someone from one of the projects asks if we're supposed to be "developing for 5 years down the road" technology-wise, or something more here and now. John Prizer says that he doesn't think that there's a clear answer. It's felt that it's so hard to say what the tech will be 10 years from now that it's not possible to develop for that. The discussion turns to "future proofing" these products. That is, figuring out the techniques of engaging kids independent of the media. Uh huh. (???? That all seems rather obvious to me....what's the big deal? Can this possibly be news?)

Object of History is another example of how this works. Here, kids can create their own "exhibits" based on objects from the Smithsonian.

Someone asks "how do these projects gain traction in the classroom?" They want to figure out how to encourage teachers and students to use them. I point out that this is really the whole point of this project, right? To take people who have some understanding of the media and to partner them with people who have understanding of the content and to thereby fit good content to compelling media.(of course, I worry that we don't have experts in either domain here...we may just have some old-school media people - e.g., tv and game folks - here with some less than compelling content folks to slurp up the money. Let's hope not.)

Someone asks about the "baseline"...i.e., what's the existing knowledge base about what's "out there" in terms of media/games/etc. that do a good job combining new media and good content. Ron from 'GBH says that this is somethign that 'GBH wants to put together.

(Have these people NEVER heard about Decisions Decisions? Or Amazon Trail? Or any of these old standards.....) Someone points out this thread/site from the H-NET list a while back.

WGBH Explains Its Initiative Mangement

(now mind you, Andy isn't here ... he's on the phone from RI. But his boss Ron LaRussa is here and so is his assistant Sarah Lawton)

Ron talks about WGBH Interactive (making companion websites for shows and doing the interactive work for WGBH educational stuff...Teachers Domain). He talks about Andy Hoffman. Knows history, technology in education, diplomatic, and someone who's an outsider sort of to public broadcasting and education.

(The Mission America people indicate that that they haven't met with Andy)

Goosewing - Andy's ed tech startup from the bubble years. Sounds like Moe Shepherd's BookTech thing.

He says that there are two parts to Initiatives Management - one is to work with the projects to help them through the logistics of actually delivering the prototypes...project management. In addition, WGBH is a resource to the projects (the Interactive Group, distribution network, marketing education products, etc.).

(I talk about what Sun Associates will do...the developing of common understandings and metrics)

BREAK

Andy Talk About the Prototype Rubric

Ron walks through this, as Andy's on the phone. He starts by making it clear that WGBH is not making the final decision as to who gets to go on into Phase 2, but rather that we just make the recommendation.

First criteria is "Student Achievement". We want a common language related to student achievement. This also ties to the rurbic's criteria that the project not be so tech intensive that teachers find it a barrier to bringing it into the classroom (as far as exceeding their own knowledge).

Second is "Elements of Design" - projects need to integrate meaningful content delivered digitally. How well a project balances this is going to be indicative of its success.

Third is "Partnership". Projects need to have partners and need to attract outside funding. Questions arise about how they can get partners - who might want rights to the product - if CPB owns all of the rights to the prototype. CPB's response is that they'll work on those issues as they arrise.

Ron adds a few elements about the criteria for moving on from Phase 1 to 2. One is that he encourages projects to target unique audiences...it's "unlikely" that 3 projects that all target the exactly same audiences will be selected for funding. (these are right at the end of the rubric).

Initiative Work Plan - Details we care about.

Sarah Lawton talks about some project management tools. Message board, wiki, etc. A way for projects to communicate collaboratively.

Some talk about some tool called Basecamp. Seems that a lot of folks use this. Others use "Wikimedia" and Google Docs. Others question the need to do more than a Yahoo or Google group.

Questions come up re. timeframe/workplan. Question is if Andy wants an actual classroom test. Andy says that "in the ideal world all of the projects would wrap up at teh same time and CPB can assess them together via the same criteria." But then he goes on to note that this probably won't happen. He says that rather, CPB will review the projects as they come in....but he can't really make the determination of when that might be or whether or not it should happen. (waffle waffle waffle). John from CPB says that they have "not made a determination" on this. Others here at CPB say that "we're not that far off from the objective." That those projects that have already started (the first 3???) are due 9/30/08. She thinks that these next 4 are close to that.

Andy says that projects need to be ready to test by 9/2008 and that reports need to be to CPB by November. But then he's contradicted by CPB and the statement is that "we need to talk." And then CPB woman says "well, you don't need to test in a school!" (???????) And everything is back into chaos. (aaaaayyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!)

There's going to have to be a meeting between CPB and WGBH (and I should be at that meeting I guess) to actually lay out the basic timeline for everyone and at least the basic expectations for what constitutes "testing" of the prototype.

John - "We need to be convinced that there is measurable evidence of increased student achievement ." And Carrie says "And if it takes you two years to do that, you need to let us know."(good grief...there's no bottom line at all here!)

And that wraps it!

 

 

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