A Colorado Non-Profit Working To

OpenWorld Learning A Colorado Non-Profit Working to Close the Educational and Digital Divide Mission

OpenWorld Learning’s mission is to help students in low-income neighborhoods to learn the core skills of the information age.

Overview

To fulfill its mission, OpenWorld Learning (OWL) operates computer labs on behalf of existing schools and after-school programs during non-school hours. Throughout the afternoons, evenings, and summers, we provide our students with daily access to computers and to skilled and caring teachers. The computer labs we manage serve as a powerful magnet – drawing students in grades kindergarten through twelve to participate voluntarily in OWL’s challenging educational program. The schools and after-school programs whose labs we operate provide OWL with free facilities and a significant share of our operating costs. This allows us to concentrate our resources and focus on the educational program that is our central mission.

Population Served

OWL’s bilingual staff is especially focused on Denver’s low-income Latino neighborhoods. We are operating our first labs on Denver’s West Side – home to three generations of Latino families. We plan to expand OWL’s program to eight Denver sites by 2003, before replicating in other Colorado and U.S. communities.

History

Over the past two years, OWL has developed a prototype of its educational program in a state-of- the-art computer lab created by the Boys and Girls Clubs of Metro Denver.1 In March we began operating a second computer lab at Mi Casa Resource Center For Women. We have been invited to manage two new West Side labs this fall – at Escuela Guadalupe (a privately funded Catholic bilingual school) and at Lake Middle School in DPS.

Support to Date

OWL has raised $280,000 in seed funding, including commitments of $100,000 and $50,000 from Steve Halstedt of Denver’s Centennial Ventures and Rick Burnes of Boston’s Charles River Ventures. We have received grants totalling $75,000 from the Colorado Institute of Technology (CIT) -- Governor Owens’ high-tech training initiative funded by Colorado’s business community. CIT has described OWL’s prototype site as “an exciting, extremely well-run technology training program for kids…highly replicable wherever good laboratories exist.”

1 80% of the Westwood students we serve at the Boys and Girls Clubs’ Owen Branch are Hispanic and 78% qualify for the federal free-lunch program. Only 8% of students at the elementary and middle schools closest to the club (Castro and Kepner) tested proficient or better in writing on last year’s CSAP.

Educational Program

The computer labs provided by our non-profit partners contain 20 networked computers and high- speed Internet access.2 Hardware provided by OWL includes digital cameras, a color printer, and an LCD projector. OWL teaches students to use this hardware, and powerful software tools, to produce writing, Internet research, multi-media, and computer programming projects related to their interests.

At the core of our educational program is an award-winning, MIT-developed software package called MicroWorlds. MicroWorlds provides tools for graphic design, word processing, and multi- media presentation, as well as a full-featured computer programming language called LOGO. The LOGO language was designed by MIT professor Seymour Papert to build children’s mathematical and analytic thinking. It has “a low threshold and no ceiling,” meaning that it is accessible to a five-year-old and challenging to a graduate student in computer science. In addition to MicroWorlds, we teach Internet Explorer, Microsoft Word, and PowerPoint -- tools universally used in education and business.

To lead the work of each lab, OWL recruits and trains a skilled and caring adult teacher. The adult teacher then trains and supervises a corps of “student-teachers” -- students as young as nine years old -- who take leadership in teaching their peers. Student-teachers pass rigorous certification tests to prepare for their teaching role. By harnessing the often untapped power of students as teachers, OWL creates a student to teacher ratio of 5:1 and makes it possible for each student to receive individual support as needed.

OWL has designed a special incentive system to reward student participation and progress. Students who complete projects earn points, and can use the points to bid for prizes at a daily auction. Student-teachers earn additional points for each hour they spend teaching, receive access to special equipment, and are eligible to enter their work in weekly contests where prizes are awarded for winning projects. We provide our most active student-teachers with donated Pentium computers for their homes, along with MicroWorlds software, and technical support in repairing or upgrading their home machines.

Objectives

The primary objectives of OpenWorld Learning are to:

 Operate computer labs in low-income neighborhoods during after-school, evening, and summer hours.

 Provide participating students with sustained, daily access to advanced computer equipment and skilled and caring teachers.

2 Mi Casa is currently raising funds to expand its lab from 10 to 20 computers. Internet access is filtered using CyberPatrol.

 Bring an average of one hundred students per site per year to high levels of proficiency in the use of MicroWorlds and other software tools to complete writing, Internet research, and computer programming projects.

 Create a team of student-teachers at each site who teach their peers and who develop valuable teamwork, communication, and leadership skills.

Results at our Prototype Site

The Owen Branch of the Boys and Girls Club serves over 150 students a day. Students who come to the club choose freely between educational, athletic, arts, and recreational programs. Over half these students will use the computer lab each day, often waiting patiently for an available computer. Since we began operating the Owen computer lab two years ago, over 650 different students have participated in the OWL program. Over 120 students have been certified as student- teachers, demonstrating their proficiency in general computer skills, word processing, Internet research, and the basics of LOGO. Writing is a required part of all projects completed in the lab and we have seen dramatic gains in writing ability among our student-teachers, many of whom spend eight hours a week or more in the computer lab.

Unique Aspects of OpenWorld Learning

While many youth-service agencies are setting up computer labs, they often lack the resources and know-how to offer a strong educational program. As a result, too many students are using labs funded by digital divide dollars to play video games. OWL’s sole focus is developing the educational program and teacher training program that have been the missing links in so many digital divide efforts.

OWL’s educational program differs from many in that student participation is purely voluntary – dramatically increasing students’ investment. Participation also requires meeting high standards of care for equipment and respect for others. In this disciplined environment, students learn much more than “computer skills.” They develop the writing, problem-solving, and people skills that are crucial to success in an information and service economy. They also build sustaining relationships with teachers, community volunteers, and motivated peers.

Finally, OWL is drawing on power of students as teachers and is tracking and rewarding student participation and progress. Together, these elements create an educational environment in which it is unusually rewarding and fun to be a teacher, a student, and a volunteer.

Management Team

OpenWorld Learning’s President is Steven Halstedt, Chairman of the Denver venture capital firm of Centennial Ventures. Our founder and Executive Director is Chris Myers, whose background is in classroom teaching, educational program design, and teacher training. Chris received a B.A. from Harvard in Latin American History, an M.A. in Educational Psychology from U.C.D, and has done additional coursework at DU’s Daniels College of Business. Our Site Leader at the Owen Branch is Danielle Ximello, a recent graduate of CU Boulder with a deep commitment to helping Latino students achieve educational, career, and life success.

Evaluation

The evaluation plan for OpenWorld Learning is designed to identify changes in the knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of participating students. Measures include the following components:

 Student attendance and retention data – utilizing an Access database that tracks participation and progress on an ongoing basis.

 Changes in knowledge – utilizing an extensive certification and evaluation process that assesses students’ skills and their ability to teach other students.

 Changes in attitudes and behaviors – using surveys designed by OWL to be completed by student-teachers, parents, OWL staff, and staff in the youth-service programs OWL serves.