AKDEC

ASHNHA hosted the Alaska Meaningful Use Summit in Anchorage, Alaska this September. Several of the conference tracks are available from ASHNHA’s website via the BTOP Media Server.

• Meaningful Use Stage 1
• Meaningful Use Stage 2
• Alaska Tribal Health System MU
• Health Information Exchange (HIE)
• Medicaid AIU Incentive Funds

Twelve of the Alaska BTOP partners met in Anchorage on the Alaska Pacific University campus. The partners present at the conference were the Alaska Commission on Post Secondary Education, the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, Alaska Injury Prevention Center, the Alaska Library Network and Digital Pipeline, Alaska Pacific University, the Alaska State Hospital and Nursing Home Association, Alaska State Tech Prep, the Alaska Vocational Technical Center, the Boys and Girls Home, KACN-TV, and the UA Office of Information Technology and Video Conferencing Services.

Partners gave updates on budgeted activities, talked about how bandwidth is affecting their services and collaborated on the year’s coming activities.

The Della Keats Health Sciences Summer Program is operated through the WWAMI School of Medical Education at the University of Alaska Anchorage. The Della Keats program provides aspiring students an introduction to various aspects of the medical profession in a six week on campus setting. Because the students are immersed in college life, they gain valuable independence and college study skills.

One of the challenges of the program is that students arrive with a wide range of exposure to Internet technologies and the means to obtain computers or mobile devices. This was an opportunity for the Alaska BTOP program to lend some assistance in the form of an Apple iPad lending program.

René Contreras, the Pathways Coordinator for Della Keats, said, “This assistance is well timed and much appreciated. Our students now have the opportunity to access educational materials online and learn critical internet and technical skills. Each student is able to learn with these tools no matter what part of Alaska they are from.”

Each student is able to learn with these tools no matter what part of Alaska they are from.

In addition to the summer lending program, University of Alaska BTOP staff provided introductory training in iPad use. At the end of Della Keats in July, students will be able to present their final work using the iPads to their parents and program administrators.

The Small Hospital Financial Collaborative Meeting sponsored by ASHNHA held in Anchorage, June 18 and 19, 2012, has brought together hospital administrators and state health officials from Alaska to receive and share information on financial matters. The program included presentations:

• Finding Lost Revenue in the Charge Master and Charge Capture
• ICD 10 Changes Everything in the Revenue Cycle
• Meaningful Use: Incentives, requirements, barriers
• Outcomes from the 2012 CAH Financial Leadership Summit
• State Medical Incentives for Meaningful Use

and workshops in the afternoon.

ASHNA received technical assistance from University staff in recording the proceedings. The recordings will be archived at the University of Alaska and will be available for participants to review, or for those who were not able to attend in person.

ASHNA staff was also trained in the setup and use of the Media Site conference recorder in anticipation of obtaining its own for dedicated regular use.

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.