| MDK-12 | MDEDU Program Overview |
|
The University of Maryland's
Office of Information Technology
MDEDU ("K-12") Program
An overview |
|
| Contents |
|---|
| MDK-12 | MDEDU Program Overview |
|
|
The University of Maryland's
Office of Information Technology
MDEDU ("K-12") Program
An overview |
|
| Contents |
|---|
WHEN did it start, and HOW?
In the summer of 1992, technology visionary Dr. Glenn Ricart, then head of OIT (Office of Information Technology), known at the time as the CSC -- the Computer Science Center -- at the University of Maryland in College Park, gave a few informal workshops in Internet usage to some friends of his who were teachers. In order for them to be able to try using what he was teaching them, he arranged for them to get e-mail accounts on the faculty/staff UMAIL computer system.
Word of this spread, and although his schedule didn't permit him to continue giving the workshops, he initiated an informal program by which the CSC should grant accounts to those in the field of education who asked for them. He said at the time that he didn't feel this would have any significant impact on the CSC :-)
By January 1993 the OIT help-desk consultants were beginning to get questions. After a somewhat rocky beginning, procedures were developed, and documentation for new users assembled, to make the program function smoothly. It was dubbed the MDEDU (MarylanD EDUcational) accounts program, known in-house at OIT as "K-12"
Interest quickly grew in internet activities beyond simple e-mail and using the public connection to the University's inforM system for Internet gopher service. The focus shifted from the original no-cost UMAIL accounts, which were incapable of such activity, to no-cost, "full-service" Unix shell Internet-access accounts on the CSC Unix Cluster. As the number of accounts grew, and communications between them increased, we began to think of the account holders as the "MDK-12 Community" (Maryland K-12).
WHO is the MDK-12 Community?
In the beginning, there were no formal guidelines for MDEDU accounts. A wide variety of people applied for and received the accounts, including not only K-12 teachers in public and private schools in Maryland, but also school heads and principals, assistant principals, guidance counsellors, employees of district school offices and district support services such as media centers, and, from early days, some teachers in the District of Columbia and faculty members at community colleges.
However, as the demand for these accounts continued to increase, eligibility was gradually restricted. At this time, although the increased availability of accounts through schools and the greater functionality of commercially available accounts has reduced demand, a person receiving an MDEDU account must have very direct ties to the students and their classroom instruction in either public or private K-12 schools in order to be eligible. Teachers (including nurses who teach), media specialists, principals, and district superintendants are the only ones eligible without question, exceptions being handled on a case-by-case basis.
The "MDK-12 Community" in its current form has become much more amorphous, including many non-MDEDU-account-holders -- some who subscribe to the MDK-12 discussion list, and some whose early connections with colleagues were formed by the accounts before they "graduated" to higher-function school-based or commercial accounts.
WHAT does the MDEDU program consist of?
The University is involved in the K-12 world in dozens of programs. Up until recently, the MDEDU program has been the main OIT contribution to this effort. It consists of:
These were simple Unix shell accounts, providing text-only access to e-mail (via the pine e-mail program), ftp (file transfer), gopher (menu-based internet access), and the World Wide Web (via the lynx web browser).
The MDEDU program was conceived before the massive increase in Web usage via graphical browsers such as Netscape. Because of the potential serious impact on the University of massive graphical use of the Web by teachers, the SLIP/PPP type of connection that would make such usage possible is not provided with MDEDU accounts. However, arrangements have been made with the MDK-12 Community for pseudo-SLIP/PPP access through MDEDU accounts, and a support network for such usage has formed within the community.
Based on significantly reduced demand for these accounts, OIT management decided on 19 August 2002 to terminate the issuing of new accounts. Support for existing account continues, however.
This was set up originally explicitly for the MDEDU group, to function as a kind of virtual faculty room, making use of telecommunications as a means of ending the relative isolation of classroom teachers. Initially new account holders were automatically enrolled. However, many accounts were never used, or not used for many months. Mail accumulating on such accounts created storage problems. So the policy changed to enrolling people when they first used their accounts. But again, some people would use an account once, and then never again. Subsequently, new account users were simply invited to enroll. This caused the membership to peak at about 1200. It has risen and fallen since, being currently at about 600, not counting MDK-12 mail that is channeled into school-district e-mail systems via "single" memberships.
Initially, in addition to the list providing collegial communication for K-12 people, it also served as a vehicle by which the OIT Help Desk could respond to individual requests for computer-help in a way that made the help available to a large number of people. But after the first year, the members of the list themselves became the largest source of support for their colleagues.
| To subscribe: | ||
| send mail to: | listserv@listserv.umd.edu (with no subject line) |
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| saying: | sub mdk-12 your-first-name your-last-name | |
Its initial account-support function was expanded to include a wide variety of K-12 technology support functions -- links to a wide variety of K-12 web resources, connections methods, jobs, conferences, books and articles. But the explosive growth of this world relative to available staffing resulted eventually in a cutback to to the minimum essentials needed to service the MDEDU accounts.
These e-mail discussion tools have been set up at various times on a temporary, ad-hoc basis, when necessary to serve the communication needs of policy discussion or groups working on school networking or professional development related to teaching with technology.
WHY has OIT been doing this?
One of the three main goals legally mandated for the University of Maryland is to act as a citizen of the state, to perform outreach of value to the the citizenry of the state.
In 1992, when Dr. Ricart envisioned working with teachers to help integrate telecommunications technology into the K-12 system, few people within the University were reaching out to the State's K-12 system in a fashion that had such a widespread potential impact. It wasn't obvious to anyone at OIT, either, but the subsequent rapid growth of the program gives ample testimony to it being an idea whose time had come.
The program took off at a rate far more rapid than we were initially prepared for. The resulting lack of total-novice-friendly documentation, and the text-only interface available at the time, kept the proportion of accounts actually used below what it might have been, as can be seen in the figure below. Nevertheless, the numbers of educators actively using their accounts was substantial, and in a Darwinian sense, those active users were the most susceptible to the attractions of technology, and they became trend-setters.
Because the primary access mode of these accounts was text-only (their inception pre-dating PPP-style graphics-capable connections) and the method needed to convert them to a graphics interface was unwieldly, the accounts portion of the program peaked in 1996. The subsequent introduction of technology into both public and private schools, and the increasing use by teachers of district- or school-based or commercial accounts, curtailed the unique role of the MDEDU accounts. Starting in 1996, we began a regular program of thinning out accounts that remain unused for six months. Its effects are reflected in the chart above.
Over time, as well, the proliferation of special-interest online discussion resources has displaced some of the functionality of the MDK-12 Listserv list. What remains is its central function as a community of teachers, providing a forum for discussion of a variety of educational issues and answers to school-related questions, both technology-related and otherwise.
Parallel Efforts -- As a result of the MDEDU program, OIT staff have provided many presentations and training sessions on technology for K-12 educators, and participated in a variety of other technology education and facilitation efforts, such as NetVision), Maryland Netweekend, and TECH CORPS Maryland). This participation is recognized by the administration of the University as a strong contribution to the State of Maryland.
AND so? . . . . (results)
Although it can't be said that the MDEDU program had clear-cut goals at its inception or through the first year or so, it has had two major impacts on K-12 education in Maryland that have focused what it has subsequently tried to do:
MDEDU has created in Maryland a community of educators connected to each other as colleagues-beyond-walls, finding sources of support and sharing information and ideas on everything from curriculum to discipline to school organization. This includes not only the very conscious community of teachers on the MDK-12 listserv list, but all the non-members who have made professional connections elsewhere on the Internet, through e-mail and "newsgroup" bulletin board discussions.
The availability of the Unix shell accounts, and the discussions that have taken place on the MDK-12 listserv list and other ad-hoc mail reflectors set up by OIT for various K-12 purposes, have had a dramatic impact on the users of those accounts in introducing them to the value of telecommunications as an educational tool throughout the K-12 range.
As a result of these two impacts, teachers spoke out early on at meetings and discussions at the school level, district level, and state level in favor of making this technology widely available. And the results are manifest. Whatever the future of the MDEDU program, it will have served its never-clearly-defined purpose well :-)