AKDEC

Part of the Alaska Library Network’s services include providing online tutoring services like its “Live Homework Help” program.

One of the ways BTOP funds helped ALN was to supply advertising money for this program.

Over the course of the academic year, students seeking homework assistance online progresses from a low number during the summer school months, and climbs steadily as the fall term progresses. The affect of advertising and outreach which included distributed flyers, stickers and bus signage, was to dramatically increase the number of participants from 2010 to 2011, when the advertising brought the message to students in need.

Working with the Alaska State Library, the Alaska Library Network will be distributing 46,000 stickers promoting the Live Homework Help service and the Testing and Education Reference Center. The first 5,000 stickers are being distributed from the public libraries in Skagway, Unalaska, Naknek, Soldotna, and the Innoko River and Tribal School Library in Shageluk. UAA will be distributing the stickers as well.

A new brochure highlighting the consumer health resources available from the Digital Pipeline program (SLED) was created. More than 10,000 brochures were mailed out to healthcare providers around the state.

ALN documented its match for the BTOP grant for this year at $315,310. This year’s match brings the total match for the grant project to $639,742 which exceeds the original match goal of $412,000.

The first grade students truly shined in their work with their storyteller last week, writes Akela Silkman, teacher in the Haines School District.

Silkman continues, “Brett Dillingham’s methodical teaching strategies and contagious enthusiasm instilled a deep understanding of effective storytelling skills as well as a foundation in sequencing and story structure.”

…Dillingham’s methodical teaching strategies and contagious enthusiasm instilled a deep understanding of effective storytelling skills…

First grade students worked with Brett Dillingham all week to write and tell their very own ‘Alaska Animal’ story. At the end of the week, students had an opportunity to perform their Alaska Animal stories in front of parents, kindergarten students, and school faculty.

Dillingham looks forward to advancing the story telling experience through a digital storytelling project and through the integration of storytelling in the everyday classroom routine as well as across all content areas.

A small snippet of the Haines story telling was recorded and photographed by Akela Silkman and posted on Animoto.

Angoon, Alaska, is a small village of about 450 mostly Tlingit Indians on Admiralty Island, Alaska. The island is unique: it has more brown bears per square mile than any place on earth and its physical connection to the mainland is via a ferry that runs twice a week. It’s Internet connection, however, runs 24/7. And the citizens of Angoon are learning how to use it, thanks to Alaska’s BTOP grant.

For five days in November, a grant from the BTOP program helped digital storyteller Brett Dillingham teach 71 students and 5 staff members of the K-12 Angoon City Schools how to write and tell their own culturally relevant stories. Participants then learned how to make their stories into podcasts and share them with family and friends in Alaska and the “Lower 48″ states using broadband technology. The stories were of Alaska animals (killer whales, eagles, brown bear, salmon) and the students did a live storytelling in front of an authentic audience of classmates, teachers, parents and elders. As they told their stories they were digitally recorded by students used iPads. The stories were then made into podcasts.

The day of the performance, students in grades 3 – 5 dressed in traditional Tlingit regalia, sang and danced for the audience before the storytelling began to honor those present, especially their relatives and the Elders. While the students were performing their stories, parents and Elders were encouraged to use their own camera phones and shown how to send them to family members and friends outside of Angoon.

For more information, contact Brett Dillingham, brett@brettdillingham.com or (907) 586-1643.

Deep in the basement of the Butrovich building, at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Video Conferencing Services (part of the Office of Information Technology) has been working to help facilitate effective video communication, and implement teaching tools for the partners in the Bridging the E-Learning grant.

This is being accomplished with a webcasting and knowledge management system by Sonic Foundry, called Mediasite. This service provides the equipment needed to record, deliver, watch, and manage an organization’s training sessions, knowledge base, and special events.

The grant has purchased five mobile recorders and a compliment of servers which store the recordings, provide an editor feature, and a searchable catalog for on-demand playback.

Each mobile recorder is packed in a kit which includes the camera and tripod, the presenter microphone, and well labeled cables for easy assembly. This kit is shipped in a sturdy Pelican case and can then be sent out to locations for recording content, or live webstreaming of events.

Each Mediasite kit can automatically record and synchronize high resolution video with slides, and capture any device, laptop, tablet, whiteboard, and document camera. These elements are delivered to the servers for cataloging and each partner can publish for general viewing or restrict it to a select group of participants.

The content can be streamed or viewed by any popular mobile device, as well as any PC, Mac, or Linux workstation. The audience will be able to see the presenter, and listen to their commentary, while watching their content at the same time. The lecture will be presented as if the viewer was in the room watching the live event.

Video Conference Services is working with MediaSite for the installation, and testing of the software and is receiving training on the recorders. Once validation is complete, more details about implementation will be posted on here on akdec.net.

The Boys and Girls Home of Family Centered Services, Fairbanks, Alaska will soon be plugging into the world of video conferencing. Using BTOP funds the Boys and Girls Home will be connecting its residents to external resources. describes how Alaska BTOP funds are going to be used to install and deliver video equipment.

Ernie Manzie, Educational Director for Family Centered Services, Inc. says “We think that using video conferencing is going to be a great way to reengage them into learning and get them excited about learning and see the options that they have.”

One of the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium’s members, the Alaska Federal Health Care Access Network (AFHCAN), has received accreditation from the American Telemedicine Association (ATA). Jay Brudzinski and Cindy Roleff, both Lead Telehealth Coordinators at AFHCAN, worked in conjunction with Mandi Constantine of ANTHC on the accreditation package.

The purpose of ATA accreditation is to protect the integrity and effectiveness of telehealth training programs, as well as encourage continuous quality improvement in telemedicine/telehealth training and education. The accreditation process is a rigorous assessment of a program’s ability to design and implement a professional training program.

The fourth organization in the nation to receive ATA accreditation of its training program, AFHCAN offers a variety of training, from a one-hour class on using the AFHCAN web client to an assortment of multi-day workshops.

In addition to its existing course content, AFHCAN has partnered with the University of Alaska to develop and teach three more college courses on telehealth. Intended as a workforce development initiative, completing the first two courses will result in certification as a Telehealth Coordinator, while completing all three courses will result in certification as a Telehealth Program Manager.

Contact information about AFHCAN and its training courses are available at its website: http://afhcan.org/contact.aspx.

What is the current status of broadband Internet availability and use across Alaska? How fast is the Internet in rural Alaska?

The answer to this question is of interest to many audiences including consumers, businesses, government, and policy makers. A survey conducted via telephone twelve months ago by ConnectAlaska, provided some initial data but did not include representation from all regions and communities in Alaska. The Alaska Sustainable Broadband Adoption project would like to expand on the first survey by collecting information from a broader group of Alaskans.

Another survey is out which will serve to supplement this information and provide a more realistic version of what communications infrastructure is really available in Alaska. Completion of the survey takes about ten minutes.

The survey is hosted at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/AKDEC.

At the Alaska BTOP partners meeting, held in Anchorage on October 4, 2011, Roxy Mourant, Alaska EED, briefly explains the Alaska Digital Sandbox program, funded by BTOP dollars.

The Digital Sandbox will host a repository of education materials prepared by students and teachers across the state. Since the Sandbox is focused on education, school districts and other providers who may filter YouTube content can still provide access to the posted learning artifacts.