Introduction
From the inception of the U.S. Department of Education’s Title VI National Resource Centers (NRCs) for International and Area Studies in the early 1960s, outreach services have been the absolute priority for the program, with special emphasis on teacher training at the K-12 level. Traditionally, NRCs have conscientiously fulfilled the outreach mandate by providing a variety of services to the K-12 community, including:
Title VI outreach programs extend to and have a positive impact on many teachers and students throughout the United States. Benefits of quality Web-based outreach, the World Wide Web, and the ready availability of computers in most U.S. schools allows Title VI centers to significantly expand and diversify their outreach efforts through the relatively inexpensive development of quality resources for K-12 educators and students that can be shared widely with virtually no geographical limits.
The thoughtful and careful development of Web resources for K-12 educators and students has already demonstrated benefits, among them:
Guidelines for Developing Quality Web-Based Materials for the K-12 Community
Despite the tremendous potential of the Web as a way to deliver international and area studies outreach, it is essential that institutions think carefully when developing and designing outreach materials for the Web. The following suggested guidelines are not exhaustive, but come from the experiences of NRC outreach programs that have developed extensive Web-based materials:
Approaches to Web-Based Outreach to the K-12 Community
Over the past decade an increasing number of NRCs and Language Resource Centers have developed Web sites oriented specifically to the K-12 community. Centers have used a number of different approaches to developing these projects. These approaches include:
1. Digitization of Existing Curricular and Teaching Resources: Many NRC outreach programs began using the Web as an outreach tool by digitizing and mounting on the Web existing outreach materials such as curriculum modules, model lesson plans, special map and photo collections. Dr. Ali Ali-Dinar, of the African Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania, is the pioneer among NRCs in digitization and systematic presentation of extisting outreach materials on the Web. http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/K-12/AFR_GIDE.html
2. Digitization of Special Collections: Many universities with NRCs have special international or area specific collections of texts, photos, music, and art work that, prior to the development of the Web, were not readily available to the K-12 community. A number of NRCs in collaboration with libraries, archives, and museums, have undertaken projects to digitize collections and to make the collections available on the Web to this community. For example, Africa Focus: Sites and Sounds of a Continent, a collaborative endeavor between the African Studies Program and the University Libraries at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, systematically presents thousands of digitized images and original music recording. http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/AfricaFocus/.
Other NRCs have collaborated with art museums to digitize art exhibitions
that students can tour virtually. The Michigan State University Museum has
digitized a number of special exhibits including, Drinking the Word of God:
Expressions of Faith and the Search for Well-Being in Two West African
Communities, http://www.museum.msu.edu/Exhibitions/Virtual/
DrinkingtheWordofGod/,
and Ethiopia: Traditions of Creativity, http://www.h-net.org/~etoc/.
3. Clearinghouse for Quality Teaching and Learning Resources: A number of NRC outreach programs have developed comprehensive Web sites that serve as clearinghouses for international and area studies Web resources that are relevant to K-12 teachers and students. An excellent example of this approach is the Latin American Network Information Center (LANIC) developed by the Institute for Latin American Studies, University of Texas at Austin. LANIC provides educators and students with systematic, user-friendly links to resources on Latin American and Caribbean culture, history, economics, politics and current affairs, in addition to teaching resources developed by a number of other Latin America NRCs. http://lanic.utexas.edu/.
4. Development of Comprehensive Web-Based Curriculum: Another approach to the use of the Web for K-12 outreach is the development of comprehensive area-focused curricula that make use of the benefits of the Web and which correspond to national and state standards and benchmarks for the social studies, humanities, and language arts. Exploring Africa, a collaborative initiative of Michigan State University’s African Studies Center, the College of Education, and MATRIX (Center for Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences Online), is an example of such an endeavor. Exploring Africa, is developing an original, five unit, 30 module interactive curriculum on Africa for middle and high school educators and learners. Development of the curriculum project began in 2001 and is currently online. The project will be completed by May 2005. http://exploringafrica.matrix.msu.edu/.
5. Pan World Archive of Outreach Materials: In 2003, under the leadership of Jonathan Friedlander of the Center for Near Eastern Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles, all NRCs and LRCs are contributing Web-based materials to a central clearinghouse for international and area studies educational materials for the K-12 community. The Web site is called Outreach World: A Resource for Teaching Kids about the World. When completed this resource will provide educators with a one-stop clearinghouse where they can search for resources on all world areas. http://www.outreachworld.org/.
6. Specialized Electronic Databases: A number of NRCs are engaged in developing specialized electronic databases that provide the educational community with access to information to enhance teaching and research. One such project, the Africa Media Program’s Electronic Data Base developed at Michigan State University, is comprised of more than 10,000 Africa related films and videos. The searchable database allows educators to search for films and videos by topic, region, country, audience (e.g. K-12 students), and it provides a critique of the film or video and an assessment of the suitability of the film or video for a particular audience. http://www.ngsw.org/~afrmedia/.
7. Digitization of Primary Sources: There are an increasing number of university and foundation-based projects involved in digitization of primary resources including original historical documents, oral interviews, historical photographs, specialized historical maps, music recordings, etc. While the primary objectives of these projects are preservation and increased accessibility within the scholarly community, these Web projects provide opportunities for K-12 communities to also access these collections. For example it allows high school students to undertake research projects that make use of primary source materials that would otherwise be inaccessible.
An example of digitization of primary resources which can be accessed and used by the K-12 community is the Africa Online Digital Library, a collaborative endeavor of the Michigan State University and the Dakar-based West African Research Center, which is digitizing historical written, oral, and photographic materials from West Africa. http://africandl.org/.
Conclusion:
Computer technology and the World Wide Web play a central role in the lives of many American youth, and computers have become increasingly important in the U.S. classroom. In addition, the Web provides students with direct access to an incredible array of international and global information and data. Combined, computer technology and the Web provide international and area studies specialists with an unequalled and unprecedented opportunity to constructively engage K-12 educators and students in learning about our world with its great diversity and complexities. However, the full potential of the Web as a learning resource can only be realized through thoughtfully and carefully planned programming that is based on sound pedagogical principles and that is responsive to the curricular needs and realities of U.S. classrooms.
Last Modified: 09/29/2005
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