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Camp Internet
Distance Learning Project
Camp Internet is a nationally recognized distance education consortium focused on creating and delivering valuable Internet-based content as well as engaging learning activities for students and families.
Professional development support for California teachers is also provided through twice a year intensive training workshops held at RAIN's Community Internet Center in Santa Barbara, California.
The Camp project was started by veteran Internet developers at the Regional Alliance for Information Networking seven years ago in preparation for the time when the Internet was to become available to every school and accessible to every classroom and community public library. The Camp founders foresaw that the rush to acquire the technological infrastructure would inevitably lead to a transition point where, with technology in hand, classrooms and libraries would suddenly find themselves in search of the content and applications that would realize the full potential of the technology.
The Camp Consortium places an emphasis on educational destinations. Technology such as the Internet provides the method for all members of our communities to have easy access to this electronic road map leading to the learning destinations.
RAIN's Camp Internet program is a K-12 Internet learning center, with parent, teacher and library components. RAIN was one of the first agencies in the world to open public access to the Internet in 1991, and since that time has been building strategic partnerships linking California classrooms with regional, national and international agencies and corporations. The lead partners that Camp Internet has harnessed to create the education consortium that is Camp Internet are:
The goal of this collaboration has been to harness the diversity of each partner's substantial investment in existing educational curricular materials, and transform this printed data into exciting online learning environments that expand the classroom to embrace regional, national and international learning opportunities.
The Camp Internet program offers a model to other regional online program developers and educational consortia by demonstrating how to :
2. transform those existing printed resources into an interactive online format
3. bring expert mentors online as guest speakers, and as project partners
4. encourage teachers to understand and appreciate these new teaching tools
5. bring the parents into the learning process to reinforce student achievements
6. provide challenges that captivate student interest and result in academic improvements
7. use the multi-media telecommunications and live broadcast technology to make a lasting advancement in school and community education programming.
Camp programs planned for 1998 -2002 include ;
Year of the Ocean (1998)(History of the California Channel Islands)
Spaceship Earth (1999)
The New Millennia(2000)
Explore the Cosmic Neighborhood (2001)
Each year-long unit features expert 'Trail Guides', as the Camp scientists, historians and featured authors and celebrities are known, who contribute content and hands-on contact with the classrooms. Framework subjects covered are California History, Earth Science, Marine Science, Astronomy, Geography, Biology, American Literature, Native American Social Studies, Creative Writing and Computer Literacy.
The Camp recognizes that the future of Internet-based learning is not merely about colorful web pages with clever animation. It is not about passively consuming information in the tradition of one dimensional magazines or books. The new online learning environment is about enabling students to become the virtual architects of a whole new type of daily learning environment.
In the Camp Internet learning environment classrooms not only learn 'about' topics and materials they could not have physically accessed in their own classrooms, they actually learn FROM the expert researchers and educators themselves who are out in the field and in the community. Camp students meet expert scientists online - they take a video tour in the private vault of a museum lead by an anthropologist, or they watch a marine biologist dive under the sea and see what he sees, hear what he is reporting - live. Students can learn about the way government and the court system are structured - and watch sessions actually take place through live video streaming - even ask questions of their elected representative, or a judge, live, at sessions they would otherwise never have access to. Or students can listen to a musician's thoughts behind the songs she sings - and ask her questions about the training and discipline required to become a successful recording artist. These are a few of the new types of learning experiences facilitated by Camp Internet's educational technology programs that are breaking down the constraints of traditional classroom walls, and opening student minds to an exciting real world, with positive career opportunities that inspire and reinforce improvement in academic achievement.
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