Road Ahead Conference- Romig Jr. High- Community Partnerships-
Bonnie Bracey
In 1995, Romig Jr. High formed a partnership with the Anchorage Pioneer's
Home and the Anchorage Museum of History and Art in hopes of connecting
students with fascinating members of the community who best reflect the
history and spirit of Alaska.
Romig Online was established in 1997 as a result of Romig's Road Ahead grant
project.
ROMIG JR. HIGH
2500 MINNESOTA DR.
ANCHORAGE, AK 99503
( This teams project)
Goal is to make technology a key part of the learning landscape. Mac Lab, and
other grants create a lab, a computer for every teacher in the building, and
the school is fully networked.
Student Community Outreach Partnership in Education
They created their own version of AOL, for their own learning.
Roming Online...........
Who and what is involved?
First Class software, Virtual School to run on top of it.
Students at the centerpiece, every child has an email address, can use clip
art, can conference and get training.
Teachers get training through released time. Credit courses after school and
learn to integrate curriculum. THere is a student administrator question area
that is very interesting.
The community is offered free email and access. They can dial in and get
school information.
They have a very special connection with senior citizens, and created a
project which initially was only email. THey added a person component and
created web pages for their senior citizens home and they placed one computer
in the
nursing home as a permanent computer station.
The student adopted two or three seniors and communicated with them. Reality
was that birthdays and holidays and histories were celebrated.
Anchorage Museum of History and Art is a partnership as well creating lots of
information and access to rare documents.
http://www.asd.k12.ak.us/Schools/Romi/ Check out the museum archives pages
and the earthquake of 1964, These are student research pages.
There are also public librarians involved in the partnership. They have
presented at a state conference.
POTHOLES IN THE ROAD AHEAD( Challenges)
Software Snafu
A software snafu was the first. The link package did not work. It was to be
fully screened .. customized AUP project. It never worked. Sixty to 70 hours
of online with the service center. Any over 10 on line and crash. Goodbye!
Goodbye!
They started over , made a budget change and purchased First Class, and they
Bureaucratic Barricades
Server had to be outside of the firewall. They had go through policy hoops
and previous agreements that the school system had made. BBS is still local
because of concerns about backdoor security concerns.
Daunting Details( little things that were trouble)
*Personal problems. One teacher was pregnant and was the trained person, and
was out on maternity leave.
*Time to allow students to BE on line.
*Time to allow classes enough time to BE in the wired /online environment.
* Getting others to take ownership to monitor and to participate in the
online
project.
*Janitor unfortunately unplugged the system and no access.
GOOD THINGS
Virtual School House( Dream Weavers out of Canada) is the basic interface and
the software is very supportive of school interface and is pre configured and
can be networked with any school in the country or worldwide that has the
same
system., curriculum areas, school room, writers corner, digital bookshelf
for
personalized reading, teacher files to the office, schedules, calendars, and
other projects.
The diner has trivia, entertainment, music notes, fun stuff, computers and
teen talk and students are in charge of the areas , and student help is a
must based on the lack of time that the teachers have. There are girls areas,
boys only, teen issues and relationships but teachects from work that the
students did( Pioneer Home)Anchorage Today.
You got to see the seniors and students working together. Thirty residents,
participated at first in the program. Lots thought that they were too old,
and after overcoming initial fears, they were able to find friends around the
country , they were able to email and communicate with the rest of the world.
Students taught them the basics of the use of technology and the Romig on
line project. One senior located her long lost sister using the computer.
The seniors were interviewed, and a digital photo was placed on the page.
Some interesting information is why they chose to come to Alaska. service
history, and
the anecdotal history of Anchorage Pioneers.
There are still some problems but they had funding for the project to get to
be
an educational technology school.
They are on BLOCK scheduling.
They put together a number of grants to continue their work
They did TEACHER TRAINING..
Many of the teachers took advanced training to be able to continue their
work.
Romig Online is a FirstClass BBS ( Softarc) running in conjunction with
Virtual School software( Dream Weaver Communication). It runs on an ethernet
network and dialup access is provided for up to four remote users at a time.
Student lab assistants help administer by volunteering to moderate various
conferences.
Bonnie Bracey
Contact : Darla Jones Jones...@msmail.asd.k12.ak.us