LInC Online

Fermilab Leadership Institute
Integrating Internet, Instruction and Curriculum
Developing educational leadership teams for technology-supported constructivist learning

Partnership Program Announcement and Call for Applications

Winter 2001 Online Course: January 3 - April 18, 2001
Wednesday online class meetings, no travel required
7-9 PM Eastern, 6-8 PM Central, 5-7 PM Mountain, 4-6 PM Pacific

Summer 2001 Facilitators' Academy: June 19-22 or July 10-13
Face-to-face at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois

Online Partner Mentorship: 2001/2002 - 2002/2003
Continue facilitating your course and academy: 2003 and beyond

$1200 stipend for K-12 educators (classroom teachers, library media staff,
staff developers, curriculum developers, or technology coordinators)
on the partner team for completing course and academy.
Optional 6 graduate credit hours in Education are available ($300).

Registration of "intent to submit" is due Friday, September 22, 2000.
Applications are due Sunday, October 1, 2000 at midnight.

Do you want to:

  • Develop educational leadership teams for integrating technology to support student investigations on real-world issues?

  • Learn how to facilitate a successful online course or add a proven online course to your existing offerings?

  • Help address the digital divide by developing leaders who will work with educators in underserved areas?


Fermilab is seeking partner agencies with a long-term commitment to teacher education who want to offer an online course to create educational leadership teams for technology-supported constructivist learning. The Fermilab LInC Partnership Program includes extensive support and materials for agency partner teams. Our goals are to:

Scaling Up Technology-Supported Engaged Learning Staff Development

LInC Scaling-up Diagram
  • Your agency will become a partner and participate in staff development from the Fermilab team.

  • Then your agency team will facilitate a LInC-based course for a number of school/district leadership teams.

  • These LInC teams will offer inservices for other staff in their district after completing your course.


After the grant period, your agency will continue to offer your LInC-based course on a regular basis to develop additional school/district leadership teams.

The LInC course was designed by teachers for teachers and grew out of a 1994 needs assessment with 12 area school districts. Fermilab has offered the course for 6 years, reaching 200 educators from 60 school districts in 18 states. The course has also been offered successfully in a full-online format for 3 years, which has allowed us to target educators in underserved urban and rural areas. The online course is highly interactive and has a participant completion rate of 85% (an excellent rate for a full-online course).

In an external evaluation, LInC participants reported changing classroom practices towards "best practice," greatly increased technical knowledge and skills, and being involved in leadership behaviors such as conducting inservices, writing grants, and participating on technology committees and school improvement efforts. Below are some quotes about the program from past participants:

"In all honesty, it's the best course I've ever taken. It's like night and day. Someone turned on the light when I took this course as to what teaching should be all about . . ."
-- urban New Jersey LInC participant

"Facilitators not only helped my team with each step of our project but anticipated and organized the future help that we will need when teaching the class. . . . It has been an excellent model for someone teaching an online class."
-- urban Michigan LInC participant and facilitator

". . . with the facilitators help we will leave with a plan that I think will be really useful for my staff. I don't think I have ever taken a class that has been so useful and so exciting and so relevant and so well done!!!"
-- suburban Michigan LInC participant and facilitator

"Thank you again for the opportunity to join your class last spring and for your continued encouragement and communication through chats, e-mail, web sites, and booklets. . . . I used as a basis for two grants, staff development plans, justification for staff dev and a proposed technology referendum, and am now using information with a committee to write a new technology plan. You have taught us so much and helped us tremendously."
-- rural Wisconsin LInC participant



For additional information, please see the LInC slides from the SITE 2000, NECC 2000, and NCREL conferences at:

/lincon/talks/onlinepd2000/

LInC is sponsored by Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Friends of Fermilab, and has been funded by U.S. Department of Energy, Illinois State Board of Education, North Central Regional Technology in Education Consortium (operated by North Central Regional Educational Laboratory) and the National Science Foundation.

LInC Course and Facilitators' Academy Overview

The Fermilab LInC course is an innovative approach to instruction designed to challenge teams of lead teachers (all grades and subjects), technology coordinators, staff developers and library media specialists to create engaged learning projects that incorporate the best uses of technology. In addition, the participants, as school/district leadership teams, create a staff development plan for their school or district to disseminate what they have learned.

We believe that the skills and strategies students need to be successful today and in the future are effectively taught through engaged learning projects. These projects are structured in such a way that students are responsible for their own learning. The projects are collaborative, student-driven, and are technology dependent. When skillfully applied, technology can enhance learning in new and powerful ways such as allowing students to reach beyond the classroom walls to collaborate with experts and students in other locations, and to publish original work to a world-wide audience. The LInC course prepares participants to develop these types of projects for and with their students.

LInC course topics include: Investigating Engaged Learning, Exploring Effective Strategies for Integrating Technology, Designing an Engaged Learning Curriculum Unit, Finding Information on the Internet, Authoring Web Pages, Adding Graphics to Web Pages, and Creating a Staff Development Plan.

Selected projects from past LInC courses are available at "/lincon/el_proj_examples.shtml".

The LInC Facilitators' Academy helps attendees develop knowledge, materials and strategies for facilitating their own staff development for technology-supported engaged learning. Activities include practice giving feedback on project ideas, assessing projects, and facilitating online. Attendees also share experiences and develop materials for their own workshops during the academy.

LInC Partnership Program Commitment
LInC Partnership Process

LInC Partnership Commitment and Time Frame
2001
  • Your team of 4-6 educators will take the LInC Online course (January 3 - April 18).
  • The entire team will take one of the four-day LInC Facilitators' Academies (June 19-22 or July 10-13) at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois.
2001/2002
  • Your team will try out your engaged learning unit with students. (Your "students" may be adults or K-12 students depending on the project you created.)
  • Your team will facilitate your LInC-based online course and academy with a lead instructor from Fermilab. The lead instructor from Fermilab will manage the overall flow of the course while your team focuses on coaching participant teams as they develop their projects. The lead instructor will also provide mentoring support as listed below.
2002/2003
  • Your team will conduct your LInC-based online course and academy working closely with a mentor from Fermilab. One or two members of your team will take on the lead instructor role. Mentorship support includes weekly planning meetings with a mentor, just-in-time support from the mentor during online class meetings, feedback on listserv and bulletin board postings, and guidance on project feedback to participants.
2003 - 2008
  • Your agency will offer your LInC-based online course 6 times in the next 3-5 years.
  • Your agency will offer your LInC-based academy 3 times in the next 3-5 years.

Eligibility

The LInC Partnership Program is open to not-for-profit educational agencies in the United States. Examples of eligible agencies include universities, colleges, state education agencies, educational associations or foundations, national laboratories, and museums. A LInC partner agency team will consist of 4-6 educators including:


The partner team should have a strong background in engaged/constructivist learning and staff development. Prior experience conducting an online course or writing Web pages is not a requirement. The agency must have a means for offering college credit for their courses. The agency and team members must also possess the hardware, software and basic technical skills requirements listed in later sections.

Agencies that can serve a broad audience (national, multi-state, statewide, large metropolitan area) and/or target underserved areas (urban, rural, minority, disadvantaged) will receive higher consideration. Spaces are limited.

Note: Fifty percent of our 2001/2002 funding is reserved for teams who will create projects that focus on science curriculum. The projects may be multidisciplinary and include other components such as english, math, social studies, art, etc.

Modifying the LInC Course

While some agencies may wish to offer the LInC course and academy as-is, we appreciate that other agencies may have special expertise to offer in designing their LInC program. Agencies are welcome to adapt the course based on their expertise, audience, and situation. Examples of eligible course modifications include but are not limited to:


Course modifications that would not be eligible include:

Costs and Incentives

Optional graduate credit in Education is available from Aurora University, Aurora, IL - for the LInC Online course, 4.5 semester hours ($225 tuition), and for the Facilitators' Academy, 1.5 semester hours ($75 tuition).

In year 1 (2000/2001), the grant will cover:


In years 2 and 3, pending approval, the grant will cover:


The grant will not cover:

Requirements for All Team Members

The Winter 2001 LInC course will be offered in a "full-online" format. There will be no face-to-face meetings, but there will be substantial interaction online. Participants will use online course materials and online discussions to communicate and collaborate with other participants and course facilitators. E-mail, mailing lists, discussion forum software, and chat software will be used. Participants will learn how to use all of these tools (except e-mail) as well as file transfer software and a Web editor during the course.

This is not an introductory level course. Based on previous courses, we know participants have spent substantial time in order to design, implement, and publish their own engaged learning project on the Web. Participants who are most successful in this course have scheduled regular weekly blocks of time to work both individually and with their team. In order to benefit from participation in LInC Online you must have:

Connection, Hardware, and Software Requirements

Each team member must have the following minimum requirements at school and at home:


In addition to the above, platform-dependent requirements are listed below. If your team chooses to use the Dreamweaver Web editor, you will need to have more than the minimum requirements. Increased system requirements for using Dreamweaver are indicated in brackets.
  • Macintosh PowerPC processor or better
  • MacOS 7.6.1 or better [MacOS 8.1 required for Dreamweaver]
  • 32 MB RAM or better [40 MB RAM required for Dreamweaver]
  • 50 MB of available disk space for installing software and project work
  • Stuffit Expander decompression software
  • [Dreamweaver requires a color monitor with at least 800x600 resolution.]

  • Pentium processor or better [120+ MHz required for Dreamweaver]
  • Windows NT 4.0/2000 or Windows 95/98/ME
  • 32 MB RAM
  • 300 MB of available disk space for installing software and project work
  • [Dreamweaver requires a 256-color monitor with at least 800x600 resolution.]

    • Requirements for Partner Agencies

    Application Process and Contact Information

    Please review these required basic computer skills, Web browser skills, and e-mail skills before submitting your application. Once you have your team in place and your agency's approval, the application forms should take 1-2 days to fill out for your agency's LInC team coordinator and about 2 hours for other team members. All applications forms are linked below.

    Due Friday, September 22, 2000:

    Due Sunday, October 1, 2000 by midnight Pacific time:

    1. The online application form submitted by each member of your team, including agency staff member(s)

    2. One resume/vita of your agency's LInC team coordinator
      (Two pages maximum, in RTF format, e-mailed to ed-linc@fnal.gov)

    3. One support letter signed by your organization's chief administrator and your LInC team coordinator's immediate supervisor (if not the same person).

      Please use this online support letter form to create your letter.
      Print and sign the created letter and U.S. mail it to:

      LInC Partnership Program
      Fermilab Education Office, M.S. 226
      P.O. Box 500
      Kirk and Wilson Streets
      Receiving Department
      Batavia, IL 60510-0500

    Teams will be notified of their status by November 15, 2000 via e-mail. All team members must e-mail a reply to confirm their acceptance within one week of notification.

    For more information, contact:

    Laura Mengel (ed-linc@fnal.gov), Fermilab Education Office
    Phone: 630-840-8107, FAX: 630-840-8248