Success Story: KIBSD and AKTEACH Making Globalized Education Happen through Digital Connection
The Kodiak Island Borough School District (KIBSD) is comprised mostly of Kodiak Island, the second largest island in the United States, and a small strip of coastline on the Western part of the Alaska Peninsula. 2,500 students are spread across 13 schools, including 7 rural schools. For a school district spread out over such a large area, delivering quality education is a challenge. Additionally, some students attend school alone and wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to “connect” with other students.
“Our vision for education in the 21st century is a blended digital approach that connects students across the globe,” said Stewart McDonald, superintendent of Kodiak Island Borough School District. “No matter how big or small your school is or whether it is urban, rural or remote, there is a basic need for kids to engage and connect.”
With the help of GCI SchoolAccess, a service provider for schools and libraries that offers broadband access, video conferencing, and state-of-the-art digital tools, coupled with Superintendent Stewart McDonald’s vision, KIBSD has successfully implemented a synchronized learning approach by providing highly qualified instruction to all students in the district, regardless of location. Both urban and rural schools receive a quality education through digital learning. For example, rural students receive Algebra 1 instruction from a highly qualified math teacher based at Kodiak High School while others receive Geometry, and Algebra II from highly qualified math teachers based at Chiniak School. Additionally, students who might typically attend school alone because they are the only high school student in a school, are now able to connect to other students across the district and form peer-to-peer relationships. This “culture of connectedness” has helped build relationships, expanded students’ world views and better facilitates the virtual learning process.
“The reality is that in many locations throughout Alaska, providing a highly qualified classroom teacher in all content areas isn’t realistic. We are stepping in with our virtual learning alternative. Our goal is to provide authentic, rigorous, synchronous and blended course offerings to students throughout the state of Alaska and, in doing so, genuinely bridge geographic barriers.” said Phillip Johnson, director of AKTEACH and KIBSD’s Digital Teaching Initiative (DTi).
After recently securing a grant to partner with other Alaskan districts KIBSD tasked AKTEACH (KIBSD’s statewide, K-12 home and correspondence school), to expand its digital collaboration outwards. The goal is to connect communities across the entire state and deliver highly qualified content, continuing to create a culture of connectedness. Initially, students are often reluctant to engage in virtual collaboration- broadcasting oneself to the ‘world’ creates its own barrier. Overcoming that barrier is where instant challenges and content sharing come into play. Instant challenges are STEM based activities and present an opportunity for students to compete in an event where the task is not shared until the moment of the event. Instruction and materials are provided and at the end, teams share the data. Content sharing is a learning opportunity across multiple districts with a teacher.
Since November of 2014, AKTEACH has been facilitating statewide monthly instant challenges and content sharing events. These events are intended to provide students with an opportunity to develop virtual collaboration skills in an environment that is both engaging and challenging yet ‘safe’ and thus far the results have been promising. Students who in the past wouldn’t normally engage are now willing and able to interact via digital tools. These new collaborative capabilities are preparing students for the workforce which often works across continents via video conferencing.
During one content sharing session, Kodiak partnered with Alaska’s SeaLife Center, located in Seward, on a virtual squid dissection lesson. KIBSD scheduled the event with the SeaLife Center and invited partnering districts to participate. Phillip and his team purchased squid and sent them across the state to partnering districts that signed up for the event. AKTEACH facilitated the connectivity to six partnering schools. Through digital learning and video conferencing one hundred and two students statewide were able to participate in a synchronous dissection without any school making the trek to the Seward SeaLife Center. “At this point. We knew we had something unique. Students were completely engaged in the dissection yet they didn’t have to leave their rural community to experience the opportunity, “said Phillip.
Another example of a successful AKTEACH virtual event is the paper airplane instant challenge. In the paper airplane challenge, 166 students statewide were given an hour and a list of materials to create a plane that flies. By way of these synchronous events, kids across the state are learning to engage, virtually, with content in ways they might never before been imagined. “We want to reach out across Alaska and connect with communities across the state,” said Phillip. “The intention is to create a culture of connectedness like we have in Kodiak. With services like GCI SchoolAccess.”
And it isn’t just across the state of Alaska. AKTEACH is connecting and collaborating with schools and organizations across the country. Schools that want to collaborate and create their own culture of connectedness can reach out to AKTEACH for details on how to become a partner district: http://www.akteach.com/pages/AKTEACH. All that’s needed is a video conferencing service, Internet and laptop computer.
The vision is to continue to expand this program outward to afford the same opportunities to students across the state no matter their location.
"Our goals are never about the technology, but about instruction using technology in a variety of ways. GCI has been flexible and responsive enough to support our instructional integration as we have grown and changed as an organization."
- John Concilus, Director of Educational Technology, Bering Strait School District
"The expertise that GCI provided in setting up the (distance learning) system and in working with us as we learned to operate it was very beneficial to our educators, who wanted to focus on the content and not the technology. With GCI's support we have reached over 5,000 students across the U.S. since our program launched in 2005."
- Darin Trobaugh, Education Program Coordinator, Alaska SeaLife Center
"GCI and their team of Engineers in Anchorage are a force to be reckoned with. They have continually proven over the years to be a team player with ASTE."
- Todd Schechter, Chief Networking Engineer, Alaska Society of Technology in Education
"Petersburg City School District is very pleased with its relationship with GCI. The district considers GCI to be a strong and important partner in the overall mission of providing an outstanding education to the students of Petersburg. As a "cutting edge", "one-to-one laptop" remote island district that relies very heavily upon stable, fast, and trouble free broadband service, the district has come to expect exceptional service from GCI as the norm."
- Robert Thomason, Ed.D., Superintendent, Petersburg City Schools
"GCI's SchoolAccess program has not only pioneered the delivery of video technology in bush Alaska, they have wrapped content and outreach around their service adding immense value. One Vision is proud to support the efforts of this innovative partner."
- George Woltors, NW Territory Manager, One Vision
"GCI’s contribution of live streaming the events during our National Competition was a great success. Our schools and families that were unable to attend the event had the opportunity to see their student(s) in person. Without GCI this would not have happened!"
- Les Martisko, Ph.D., CEO, United States Academic Decathlon
"GCI SchoolAccess has serviced the Jemez Mountain School District for the past seven years impeccably. GCI has developed a product that eliminates many of the pitfalls of traditional piece-meal approaches to implement Internet services by bundling the most critical services into a concise package. Additionally, GCI is well established in the navigation of E-Rate protocols, has an outstanding technical support team, and has a highly competent education program manager."
- Adan Delgado, Former Superintendent, Jemez Mountain School District
"We have a tradition of providing our faculty, staff, and students with the most up-to-date technology that can be made available, and GCI makes carrying on that tradition a possibility. GCI is instrumental in the planning, designing, and implementation of our distance learning services. This support, along with the broadband services provided by GCI, has allowed our distance learning program to be second to none in Alaska."
- George Gladish, TAI Coordinator, Lower Kuskokwim School District
"GCI School Access has been a great partner for Ilisagvik College. In 2012 and 2013, they donated funds to support our annual STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) camp, which provides a fun and educational opportunity for rural Alaskan youth. We are very grateful to GCI School Access for their sponsorship!"
- Pearl Brower, President, Ilisagvik College
"GCI has been providing technical support for videoconferencing events at the ISTE Conferences in San Antonio and San Diego to the IVC Operations Teams for the past two years. Their knowledge and experience has been a key to our success."
- Paul Hieronymus, IVC Operations Chairman, 2013 ISTE Conference
"GCI SchoolAccess makes it possible for our coaches and volunteers to communicate in the villages and most importantly make sure the students are safe by providing our coaches with mobile technology in the villages."
- Lars Flora, Director, NANANordic
"CILC has partnered with GCI SchoolAccess over the last few years on many projects that have benefited and enriched the life of people both in Alaska and the lower 48. Much of this would not have been possible without the leadership of Dr. Pam Lloyd."
- Janet L. Zanetis, CEO, The Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration (CILC)
"Our administration realized our aggressive approach to educational achievement could only be met with a network that can support the growing number of mobile devices in our district and the increasing use of video conferencing for our classes. GCI SchoolAccess helped us transition off satellite and onto a terrestrial service that supports these goals."
- Dan Walker, Assistant Superintendent, Lower Kuskokwim School District
"The most powerful thing in a traditional classroom is the connection between the teacher and the student. And that connection happens over two-way video."
- Gary Baldwin, former superintendent, Lower Kuskokwim School District
"GCI is a strong educational partner with the Alaska Distance Education Consortium, helping to expand broadband, bring technical solutions, and instructional programming to high need areas."
- John Monahan, Alaska Distance Education Consortium
"Educating 4 Leadership has benefited enormously from our partnership with SchoolAccess to provide student leadership and 1:1 resources for Alaska, other states, and the UK at present. We consider the contributions from SchoolAccess to be completely vital to our work and success during the past three years. We appreciate their support!"
- Dr. Mark Standley, CEO, Educating 4 Leadership
"In the 15 years I have been an administrator in the Northwest Arctic Borough School District we have been utilizing Broadband services from GCI. The distances and the cold and lack of infrastructure are tough challenges, but GCI is among the best of all vendors that we use for services to our students, faculties, and schools."
- Norman Eck, Ph.D., Superintendent, Northwest Arctic Borough School District
"GCI has been an instrumental partner in helping the Alaska Zoo develop a Long Distance Education Program. This program provides a venue for the Alaska Zoo to expand the reach of its Education classes through video conferencing and the ability to share Education Programs with students throughout our state."
- Patrick Lampi, Executive Director, Alaska Zoo
"GCI is a company with an exceptionally strong reputation for its expertise in building out networks in rough terrains and for their deep knowledge in all aspects of videoconferencing. Throughout my several years of partnering with GCI, I have come to learn that those who work within the education division are dedicated to the mission of bringing world-class opportunities to all learners across Alaska, including some of the most remote corners of the state."
- Ruth Blankenbaker, Former CEO, The Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration (CILC)
"GCI has a long track record of being a friend to schools and libraries in the State of Alaska. Despite the unpredictable timing of E-rate funding, GCI's willingness to work with anchor institutions by appling discounts and handling E-rate invoicing is a welcome relief when staff is small. Steve Walker and his team at GCI deserve a big THANK YOU for finding ways to make the billing process understandable and manageable for the smallest of our schools and libraries."
- Valerie Oliver, Alaska USF/E-Rate Coordinator for Alaska Schools and Libraries