United States Department of Education
May 1998
Section One: U.S. Department of Educaton Cover Sheet
Section Two: Project Summary of Generation www.Y
The primary goal of the Generation www.Y project is the same as all other Technology Innovation Challenge Grants - the formation of a community dedicated to the improvement of student learning through the use of educational technologies. What makes Generation www.Y unique is that students are included as the centerpiece of this community. The Generation www.Y model trains students to act as partners and research assistants to teachers, administrators, classified personnel, parents, community members, and college students studying to become teachers. This training is accomplished by an 18-week Generation www.Y course for middle and high school students. In this course, students learn the technical and lesson planning skills necessary to help one of their teachers infuse technology into their curriculum. The goal of this student/teacher partnership is to change one of the teacher's existing lessons to reflect a strong use of technology.
Generation www.Y class graduates then continue to provide technology-related staff development to their teachers throughout their school career. Selected Generation www.Y graduates work with colleges of education to provide training to preservice teachers, provide elementary students and teachers technology curriculum integration expertise and work in district computer laboratories to keep the facilities available after hours for students and community members. Another major component of the project is an aggressive dissemination model. Starting with six schools in the Spring of 1997 the program has expanded to 19 schools in the Spring of 1998 with 200 new schools throughout the country implementing the Generation www.Y during the next school year.
Section Three: Project Status
During the nineteen month period since the Generation www.Y Technology Innovation Challenge Grant Project was awarded in October 1996 , we have made significant movement toward achievement of the stated goals. The following are all the project goals (in bold print) as stated on our Grant Application submitted in June of 1996. This report will emphasize the accomplishments since our first Annual Report submitted in May of 1997.
1. To enable students to learn telecommunications skills
The student develops the skills necessary to access information.
The student improves oral and written communications skills.
The student develop cross-cultural communications skills.
The student analyzes, synthesizes, and evaluates information.
These skills are taught as part of the 18-week Generation www.Y semester course which presently is being taught to nearly 400 students in 19 schools. The Generation www.Y class has two components: (1) students learn both technical and pedagogical skills based on twelve units of study, and (2) students partner with one of their teachers and develop at least one project in the teacher's class that incorporates what they learned skills into a lesson plan.
The curriculum for this class (the 12 unit plans) has undergone three revisions with the latest revision to be used in the Fall of 1998. The objectives for each of these units are included in Appendix A or they can be in downloaded from on our the Generation www.Y web site (https://kids.osd.wednet.edu). The state of Washington has given Generation www.Y $350,000, which in large part, to develop the Gen www.Y curriculum for all Washington state secondary schools.
The cross-cultural component was evidenced in the project phase of the class when many students linked their classes to other schools on the network. In addition, Generation www.Y classes are now being taught in four U.S. Virgin Islands schools. Next fall schools in the Philadelphia's Empowerment Zone, Los Angeles, and a migrant labor camp middle school in California will teach the Gen www.Y class providing further multicultural connections for all Generation www.Y schools.
2. To expand the core number of OSD student network leaders to team with and train district teachers to incorporate telecommunications in all schools.
During the 1997/98 school year, more than 300 additional Olympia School District secondary students entered the Generation www.Y course whose major purpose was to meet this project goal. An additional 340 students in other districts attended Generation www.Y classes. The 160 students were chosen at random with a gender balance in mind. Appendix B shows a list of the 1997/98 students involved, the teacher they are partnering with, the subject area, and the name of the technology-infused project they did with the teacher.
3. To expand the number of OSD teachers who regularly use telecommunications as a tool for the development and delivery of integrated curriculum.
The same Appendix B shows approximately 600 teachers who are now incorporating technology into their lessons. Many of these projects involve integrating more than one subject area. The list of all projects, objectives, implementation plans, and evaluations of each project can be found on the Generation www.Y projects web page (https://genwhy.wednet.edu/projects.html). As the semester does not end until June 17, all the projects listed in Appendix B have not been designed and evaluated at this time. The Gen www.Y web site allows educators to link to any of these teachers via email to gain further information about these projects.
4. To expand the number of OSD teachers who use telecommunications as an instructional tool to increase students' understanding of cultural diversity.
Many projects involve keypal, data collection, and writing projects with other students and classes around the world (see our Gen www.Y Projects web page to see details on each project). Four schools in the U.S. Virgin Islands began offering the Gen www.Y class in January of 1998. Students and the Gen www.Y teacher from each of these four classes came to Olympia in January to learn the model. This cultural exchange was beneficial to both the Virgin Island and Olympia students.
In addition, two Olympia Gen www.Y students traveled with their teacher to Philadelphia to present Gen www.Y ideas to the Roberto Clemente Junior High School. The Sunset Middle School in Bakersfield is a migrant labor camp school that will begin Generation www.Y in the Fall. More than 20% of Gen www.Y schools have no white students. This provides not only cultural diversity but also allows the Gen www.Y model to be tested in a wide variety of settings.
5. To develop materials which will provide a set of sequential guidelines for expansion.
The original plan was to expand to two additional school districts in the fall of 1997 (Centralia and Shelton) and six schools in the Spring of 1998 (4 in the Virgin Islands, Pioneer School District, and the private parochial St. Michael School). Because of the success of Generation www.Y, hundreds of schools want to replicate this model. Generation www.Y wrote a grant proposal to obtain funding from the Washington State Competitive Technology Grants to further refine the curriculum, develop a workshop for rapid expansion, and deploy the model into 13 additional school districts. This grant was entitled the Washington State Generation www.Y Project and received $350,000 in January of 1998. On May 29 an additional 26 schools will be trained using the newly developed materials and workshop format. Each of these new expansion schools will be supplied a notebook containing the unit plans, video tapes, and student workbooks (Appendix A contains the unit objectives).
Generation www.Y submitted a grant to expand to 59 additional Washington state secondary schools in the Spring of 1999. We will find out in June whether this grant is funded. Additionally, the Milken Family Foundation is funding Generation www.Y to implement the model into approximately 30 schools in eight states during the next school year. These schools will be trained in Los Angeles in June of 1998 and will continue to be trained online via the Milken Exchange Virtual Workspace during the Fall. This real-time workspace may hold potential to expand the model nationwide.
Appendix C shows the Generation www.Y schools by semester and dramatically shows how our expansion plan is working.
6. To establish the school librarian as a key player for access to telecommunications information as well as published information.
The school librarian has played an important role in helping teachers and students find resources, both print and electronic, for the Generation www.Y student projects. Four of the 19 Gen www.Y teachers are school librarians. However, we still have not found a library coordinator for the project but do have some potential leads.
7. To train preservice teachers in basic telecommunications skills.
Our model is based on training a cadre of students in the Generation www.Y class who then go out and work with preservice teachers (as well as administrators, classified personnel, elementary schools and the community). We selected five Generation www.Y graduates from the 450 OSD students who have taken the Gen www.Y course to work with teacher educators to develop educational technology experiences for preservice teachers.
As a result of numerous meetings with faculty members from The Evergreen State College and St. Martins College, a plan was devised where all 120 college students studying to become teachers will attend ten hours of educational technology classes in an Olympia school taught by Generation www.Y class graduates. Thus far Generation www.Y students have taught nine sections of this class and the preservice teacher evaluations of the course were very positive (See Evaluation section and Appendix E). This has been an extremely successful use of Generation www.Y graduates because preservice teachers are now being taught by high school students in a school setting where they can really see how to infuse technology into the curriculum. Pacific Lutheran University is also planning on utilizing Gen www.Y graduates to help train their preservice teachers.
8. To utilize preservice teachers to assist secondary school students in developing training modules for delivering pedagogically sound lessons to teachers.
The original plan was to have preservice teachers monitor Generation www.Y projects to learn how technology is being used in the curriculum and provide feedback for Generation www.Y students that they can use to improve their lesson plans. This goal has not been realized as yet but discussions with college of education staff indicate that this will happen next school year.
9. To utilize preservice teachers to monitor non-school hour access to telecommunications labs for those students and parents who lack home connectivity.
During the fall of 1997, a model was developed to serve "high needs" populations after-school and on Saturdays. This model kept two school computer laboratories open three hours each evening and six hours on Saturday. During these times, five assistants were available to help students, parents and community members with their technology needs. These five assistants included two Generation www.Y students, two preservice teachers with expertise and interest in educational technology, and one member of the school's staff.
This component of Generation www.Y has shown that Gen www.Y graduates can indeed contribute to the community needs. The Northwest Regional Education Laboratory (NWREL) evaluation of the first four months of the program can be found in Appendix E.
Another promising outcome of Gen www.Y's potential in the community is when a community group asks for a Generation www.Y graduate to help them train or teach their members. Thus far this has happened with a group of Vietnamese parents, a summer school class for Hispanic students, a girl scout troop, and a local YWCA.
10. To expand the preservice training model to teachers of Native American learners.
The Evergreen State College will have a cohort of 60 preservice teachers entering their school in the fall of 1998. The entire cohort will be teachers preparing to teach in schools for Native Americans. Directors of this special program have met with Generation www.Y staff and are beginning to integrate Generation www.Y principles into the program. It is anticipated that final details will be worked out next week.
In addition, Gen www.Y students spoke at the National Native American Technology Conference and various tribal schools are interested in implementing the model. As many as three of these schools will begin Gen www.Y next year.
11. To replicate the Student Network Leader model into a higher education setting.
This will take place at the St. Martins College. We have not discussed the goal to any great extent at this point.
12. To train Expansion District teams of teachers and student network leaders to implement the Generation www.Y model into their schools.
See goal 5 above for initial discussion on expansion teams. Nineteen schools are presently implementing the Generation www.Y model. This will expand to 49 schools next fall and over 100 in the January of 1999 (see Appendix C).
Each of the four Virgin Islands schools presently implementing Generation www.Y sent a team of one teacher and two students to Olympia in January of 1998 to learn how to expand the model into their schools. The four Virgin Island Gen www.Y classes started the first week in February. Dr. Harper and two Generation www.Y graduate students traveled to the Virgin Islands in mid-February and met with each Gen www.Y class and all staff members from each of the four schools. This strategy helped all parties in the Virgin Islands understand the model and the classes have had a relatively successful first semester.
In addition to the Virgin Islands schools, the original grant proposal had three additional "high needs" Washington state school districts and one Washington state private school receiving funds to implement Generation www.Y. A brief summary of each of these original expansion sites follows:
Both the Centralia School District and the Shelton School District are rural high poverty districts. A Gen www.Y teacher and two students from each district were trained in the Spring of 1997 and the two schools began Generation www.Y classes in the Fall of 1997. Each district has two secondary schools and each expanded from the one school offering Gen www.Y in the Fall to two schools in the Spring of 1998. Appendix B lists more than 125 projects that these four schools have accomplished. Appendix F has a copy of a front page feature article in the Centralia Newspaper that shows the power and success of the Generation www.Y model in their district.
The Pioneer School District is a very rural and depressed community. A Gen www.Y teacher was trained in the Fall of 1997 and the model was implemented in this grade 5-8 school in January of 1998. The quality of the results of the student projects in this district have been remarkable. The program is galvanizing this small community and Gen www.Y students are giving presentations to local hospitals, Rotary Clubs, etc.
The St. Michael School is a K-8 parochial school which also began the Gen www.Y class in January of 1998. Both the Pioneer and St. Michael Schools are the first schools to have 5th graders in the class and first Gen www.Y classes to partner students with K-5 teachers. Although the initial classes are still ongoing, it appears that expansion into these elementary grades can also be beneficial.
Three additional schools in the Lake Washington School District and the Federal Way School District are presently offering Generation www.Y classes. These districts are large suburban districts near Seattle. Microsoft is located in the Lake Washington District. The classes have been such a success this year that each of these districts are expanding the model into ALL their secondary schools in the Fall of 1999.
In all cases, the expansion schools have commented that Generation www.Y was a catalyst for jump starting technology in their districts. Administrators had to ready the hardware and software infrastructure to make the Gen www.Y class a success (with the help from Gen www.Y corporate partners). Generation www.Y director Dennis Harper gave numerous workshops to the staffs at all these schools to ensure buy-in from the teachers the Gen www.Y students would be partnering with. Somewhat surprisingly, the quality of the Generation www.Y projects in these expansion districts is as good or better than concurrent Gen www.Y projects conducted in Olympia Gen www.Y classes.
The major problem we have is that too many districts across the nation want to replicate the model before we have fully developed and evaluated our initial efforts.
13. To field-test training materials following sequential guidelines.
Presently, the second version of the Generation www.Y curriculum is being used. Recent meetings with the Generation www.Y teachers and outside curriculum expert consultants are producing the third edition of the curriculum. It is this version that the 26 new Gen www.Y schools will be trained in on May 29. A summary of the objectives of the new 12 unit curriculum is included in Appendix A. The complete lesson plans will be published along with 60 minutes of video tape by the International Society for Technology in Education in the Fall.
The Northwest Regional Education Laboratory and the participants in the projects are evaluating these materials (see evaluation plan below). The materials will be modified and tested in 50 schools throughout the country next fall. It is anticipated that by December 1999, a set of materials will be created that will be of high enough standard to replicate Generation www.Y into thousands of schools.
Other project developments during reporting period
(May 1, 1997- April 30, 1998)
Some quick comments on other Generation www.Y developments
A Generation www.Y student continues to update the Generation www.Y web page (https://genwhy.wednet.edu/index.html). This website has six major components: (1) a description of the project along with a downloadable version of our grant application, (2) the Generation www.Y class unit plans, (3) a projects link which archives all Gen www.Y projects and is where students submit their project proposals to Gen www.Y consultants, (4) links to Generation www.Y corporate partners, (5) Gen www.Y news releases, (6) a list of Gen www.Y students and staff, (7) Gen www.Y related links, and (8) a form that schools and districts can submit their interest in implementing Gen www.Y. Some of these components need additional work and another student is being hired to update the site as it is getting large due to the rapid expansion of the model. A search engine to find specific project topics is being created.
Workshops were held in each of the 19 schools presently offering Generation www.Y for the entire staff of each school. This gave approximately 700 teachers who would be partnering with students an overview of Generation www.Y.
During the year, corporate partners have provided Generation www.Y $1,763,334 (See Appendix G for details).
A Generation www.Y program support specialist has been hired (Mr. James Smith) to help cope with the rapid expansion of the project.
The Olympia School District hardware and network infrastructure has been improved and enlarged in order to handle the many Generation www.Y components and projects.
The project has received much positive publicity. The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times both featured Generation www.Y in a good light. These articles along with others can be seen in Appendix F.
The Generation www.Y was awarded a Golden Apple Award by PBS as an outstanding education project. The enclosed video tape contains clips from the PBS broadcast where Gen www.Y received their award. This tape was sent to every one of Washington state's 272 districts to inform them about Generation www.Y and invite them to participate in a TLCF grant proposal. The tape also shows Gen www.Y students working with a Junior High School in Washington DC. Local access networks has also shown Gen www.Y related videos.
Generation www.Y was awarded a $350,000 grant to refine and expand Generation www.Y throughout Washington state (see Appendix G for details of this grant).
The Generation www.Y hosted the Western Cluster meeting of Technology Innovation Challenge Grant Recipients on June 1997 in Olympia. Gen www.Y students were involved in the planning and delivery of this meeting.
A Generation www.Y showcase was given in the U.S. Senate building in Washington DC in May of 1997. Numerous senators, representatives and their aides attended the showcase and learned about Generation www.Y.
The Olympia School Districts hosted more than 100 visitors from throughout the world who came to see Generation www.Y first hand.
Project director Dennis Harper met in Los Angeles with officials of the Milken Family Foundation to develop a plan where they help fund the expansion of Generation www.Y into 30 new schools throughout the country. The project is looking at ways in which the Milken Exchange Virtual Workspace can be used as a training and dissemination vehicle.
A plan was developed in conjunction with the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) to publish and disseminate future Generation www.Y materials.
The project began investigating ways in which Generation www.Y can benefit elementary schools. Two after school classes were conducted at an Olympia elementary school and taught by two Generation www.Y graduates and two graduate students from the Evergreen State College.
Generation www.Y students participated in teleconferences to Kentucky and Bakersfield, California to present and provide feedback to students and educators. One result of these teleconferences is that a migrant labor camp school in Bakersfield will be employing the Gen www.Y model in the fall of 1998.
A group from the American Institute of Research visited the Generation www.Y program in March as part of their evaluation of all TICG projects.
Dissemination efforts have been extensive. More than 100 Generation www.Y students and teachers have presented the Generation www.Y model at conferences and meetings throughout the nation. These include:
Challenge Grant Directors' Meeting in Washington D.C. - May 1997
National Education Computing Conference in Seattle - June 1997
The Road Ahead Symposium in Redmond - June 1997
Western Cluster TICG Meeting in Olympia - June 1997
2B1 Gathering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology - July 1997
Menucha-NWREL Think tank near Portland - August 1997
National Meeting of College of Education in Portland - September 1997
Challenge Grant Directors' Meeting in Washington D.C. - October 1997
Iowa Educational Technology Conference in Des Moines - October 1997
Improving American Schools Conference in San Diego - October 1997
National Native American Technology Conference in Tacoma - Nov. 1997
Telecommunications in Education Conference in Austin - November 1997
Western Cluster TICG Meeting in Honolulu - January 1998
National Association for Science Educators in Philadelphia - February 1998
Arizona Improving American Schools Conference in Prescott - March 1998
Northwest Council for Computers in Education in Spokane - March 1998
Problems Encountered
The project has gone surprisingly smooth and at least a year ahead of originally scheduled. Considering we had the project up and running with 160 students and 160 teachers within two months after receiving the grant and have trained 750 teachers and 750 students to infuse technology into the curriculum to improve student learning, all involved are truly excited.
Of course, there are areas we need to improve on as the project expands. One area of concern is the participation of the consulting districts. These districts in fourteen states were supposed to monitor the projects the students and teachers were doing. However, only a few of the districts ended up participating. Confusion about who was responsible in each district, what the duties entailed, and problems with contracts caused most of the problem. Hiring a consulting district coordinator did not seem to help. Next year we will probably continue with the three districts who have regularly participated and use the funds allocated for this effort to help support subject area consultants to read Gen www.Y project proposals.
As expected, the most difficult aspect of the Generation www.Y course for the students was working with the teachers to write their lesson or project plan. Being difficult is not necessarily bad. The students had to really think about what they were trying to do and how the students in the teachers' classes would react and what they would learn. Also, how would they know what the students learned? Keeping the projects aligned to our district and state essential learnings was also a struggle that was worth the effort. To alleviate this problem, a new set of web-based submission forms were created which have definitely helped.
As we suspected before the grant, students really can contribute greatly in helping to reform education. Bringing the student in as a change agent rather than being an object of change has certainly excited many educators in the country.
Project Evaluation Plan
The project evaluation is being conducted both externally (Northwest Regional Education Laboratory) and internally within the district. Ms. Gwen Hyatt (503- 275-0657, [email protected]) is the NWREL employee that is involved in the evaluation of Generation www.Y. During this reporting periods she has come to Olympia on five occasions and there was a meeting in Portland as well.
A series of evaluation instruments have been refined and developed over this reporting period. These instruments can be found in Appendix D and the results obtained from the distribution and collection of these instruments can be found in Appendix E. In short, these instruments obtain information about (1) the Gen www.Y students, (2) the teachers partnering with these students, (3) students and parents attending the after-school community laboratories, and (4) preservice teachers being taught by Gen www.Y graduates. The NWREL summaries of this data can be found in Appendix E.
The NWREL conducted a series of case studies where teachers and students gave extensive feedback on what happened in their classes as a result of Generation www.Y. The summaries and implications for modification can be found in Appendix E.
The Generation www.Y curriculum has been evaluated internally and by consultants from the University of Maryland, Drexel University and the University of California in Santa Barbara. The evaluation helped in the creation of the new curriculum (see Appendix A).
New methods for evaluating the projects that Gen www.Y students complete with their partner teachers have been developed. These online forms allow us to determine what actually took place in the hundreds of curriculum-based projects. The forms can be found on the web at: https://genwhy.wednet.edu/curric.html
All Generation www.Y teacher meetings are video or audio taped and transcripts of these tapes form a valuable evaluative resource for the project.
A form to evaluate the Gen www.Y expansion workshop that will be given to 26 additional schools on May 29 has been developed and can be found in Appendix D. This information will be invaluable in creating similar workshops for groups of schools throughout the country.
zSection IV: Budget
The current (as of May 1, 1998) status of our budget expenditures can be found in detail in Appendix G. There have been no significant changes in the budget that was approved in October of 1996. Some budget reprogramming was requested and accepted in December of 1997. These changes are included in the budget summary found in Appendix G. We are unable at this time (with five months remaining in the second budget period) to determine whether we will want to request any of the budget be carried over into the next budget period. Because of the rapid expansion of the model, it is unlikely that there will be too much carry over this year (probably not more than $150,000).
We have also included, in Appendix G, a list of in-kind contributions from corporate, foundation, state, and school sources. These in-kind contributions for the 1997/98 school year totaled $2,786,930. This is three times the amount received from the TICG program. People out there REALLY like this model!
Section V: Supplemental Information/Changes
There have been no changes in project activities, objectives, or strategies this year. Next year, the only change we foresee is that we may be expanding the model nationwide faster than we first anticipated. This may require some of our budgeted money to be reprogrammed next year, or some of this year's budget carried over to next.
In general, we are overwhelmed by how fast and well the project has progressed considering we are only in the second year of a five year grant. The attention Generation www.Y is receiving in the district, state, nation, and the world has been encouraging. We look forward to three more years to refine and assess the model. Thank you for all your cooperation.
Dennis Harper, Ph.D.
Director, Generation www.Y project
