OVERVIEW

About the Project

The IUPUI University Library's collaboration with the Indianapolis Museum of Art and other local cultural organizations presented an opportunity for central Indiana area schools, home school audiences, public libraries, and museums to partner in lifelong learning activities and programs.

Project collaborations with schools, libraries, and museums, enhanced awareness and application of local educational activities, programs, and resources available to the audiences. Project collaborations with vendors provided access to significant digital art-related images and text resources for use in educational activities and programs.

Shared Vision

To enhance teaching and learning through the innovative and meaningful application of technology in lifelong learning environments.

Mission

To support and enrich the educational activities and programs of schools and libraries of central Indiana lifelong learning audiences through professional development workshops, collaborative model projects, and access to digital cultural heritage images and texts.

Goals

• Provide access to emerging technologies and digital cultural heritage resources in cross-disiplinary lifelong learning programs and activities in central Indiana schools and libraries.
  
  
• Negotiate reasonable fee structures and service terms to commercially licensed resources for educational audiences.
  
  
• Blend content of educational programs and curriculum, digital images and text, and museum resources to enrich learning and teaching.
  
  
• Document 'best practices' for lifelong learning collaborations between libraries, schools, and museums with an emphasis on how the community is served, technology used, or education enhanced.

Project Phases

Phase I - The first phase consisted of startup and promotion actives of the project. Activities included hiring staff, forming advisory boards, awarding 12 mini grants to six teams of teachers, and selecting digital resources. Other actives included negotiating licenses with vendors, setting timelines, and writing model instructional units.

Phase II - The second phase of the project focused on the K-12 Environment. Twelve teachers were each given $3000 in mini-grants to evaluate the usefulness and relevancy of the image databases for regular classroom instructional use. The pilot teachers participated in a three-week Summer Institute during which they wrote instructional units that integrated the visual arts into the curriculum. The Indiana State Standards for all curriculum areas served as both a starting point and guidelines for the instructional units.

During the 1999-2000 school year, the 12 pilot teachers implemented the instructional plans and looked for other ways in which visual arts could be integrated into the regular classroom. Teachers took their classes on field trips to local museums and held distance learning classes.

In January of 2000, the visual databases were made available to all Central Indiana schools. Teachers and students are able to access both Corbis and Grove through an IP gateway mechanism. No passwords were required.

Phase III- The third phase primarily involved the continuing operations of the grants activities including implementation of the project’s instructional units into the classroom setting; promotion and publicity at local, regional, and national professional educational and library meetings, conferences, and on-demand requests; mentoring of teachers by the project’s mini-grant pilot teachers.

Phase IV - Phase IV of the IUPUI/IMA Community project integrated public library lifelong learning audiences into the grant activities. The purpose was to achieve the project’s global goal to serve as a gateway to local cultural resources for use in cross-disciplinary collaborative educational programs and activities of schools’ [public, private, home-schoolers] and public libraries’ educational
audiences.

Serving as a catalyst to infuse art into cross-disciplinary curriculum, the project facilitated local
learning communities among schools, libraries, and museums built around the project’s digital
resources of local Hoosier Artist paintings and WPA [Works Progress Administration] Murals found
throughout Indiana.

Two of the project’s significant achievements to provide access via the Internet to local resources
included the Hoosier Artist Project and the WPA Murals project. Both activities focused on
providing Internet access to local digital cultural information.

For more information on the project phases, see the Community Project Final Report.