Twenty-five children in Mr. Quezada's second grade class will have front row seats at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, April 18. They will be clicking on Virtual Chautauqua and watching a video of Bonnie Phipps and her cast singing "Meatballs and Spaghetti," among other online performances.
During their computer lab time, these children will join more than 100 of their schoolmates at Rocky Mountain Elementary at 800 E. 5th Ave. in Longmont, where teachers have used Virtual Chautauqua to introduce them to Colorado performing artists online.
Virtual Chautauqua has helped more than 60 Colorado performing artists get online. The site includes more than 100 dance, poetry, music and theater samples from a diverse group of Colorado performing artists. Virtual Chautauqua also assists teachers in selecting several online performances and putting them together into an activity for their students.
Last month Kim Saporito, an art teacher at Rocky Mountain Elementary, asked her first and second grade art classes to listen to Neil Haverstick play "Acoustic Stick" and to "draw the music." They also watched Jumpstart Productions perform the "2x2" ballet dance and were asked to draw the shapes that were formed as the dancers moved.
"K-12 teachers face many barriers in their use of multimedia Internet content in their classrooms," said Mary Virnoche, sociologist and research director on the project. "Yet despite the challenges, we found that teachers are interested and excited about sharing Colorado performing artists on Virtual Chautauqua with their students."
At Rocky Mountain Elementary, where a majority of the staff speaks English and Spanish, many teachers like Mr. Quezada are creating bilingual online activities incorporating Virtual Chautauqua performances.
"The kids love it," says Beatriz Martinez Kinnison, principal at Rocky Mountain Elementary. The school is a Bilingual Literacy Center with 540 Pre K-2 students. Seventy percent of the students are from minority and low-income families. "Many of the children do not have Internet access at home," she added. "It is important that they work with computers at school. And it's wonderful to have quality local performing arts online that the kids can see and hear."
In Colorado the ratio of music teachers to students is 1 to 700. The Internet, while not a substitute for live instruction, may provide one avenue for exposing children to a variety of musical and other performing arts experiences. The project provides technical support, teacher honoraria and substitute teachers for schools with teachers interested in working with the online resources.
According to Professor Bruce Henderson, director of the New Media Center in the CU-Boulder School of Journalism and Mass Communication and a project co-principal investigator, "The university has a particular interest in Virtual Chautauqua as it complements its own technology, arts and media curriculum that is part of the Alliance for Technology, Learning and Society or ATLAS initiative. It is important to the university for us to continue our work with K-12 schools and teachers even after this grant closes next September."
Virtual Chautauqua is a $1 million outreach grant project coordinated by the University of Colorado at Boulder School of Journalism and Mass Communication in collaboration with the Colorado Council on the Arts. The project received $375,000 from the National Telecommunication and Information Administration Technology Opportunities Program. Additional funding was provided by 15 arts, education and community media organizational partners.
An interdisciplinary team of researchers is following Virtual Chautauqua. Faculty and graduate students from journalism and mass communication, sociology, anthropology and education are working on the project. They are investigating the social and educational implications of the new technologies, as well as technological and policy related research questions.
The Colorado partners on the grant providing in-kind and cash contributions include AccessNet Communications, Arts Communication, Boulder Community Network, Centennial Board of Cooperative Education Services (BOCES) Compensatory Education Program, the Colorado Council on the Arts, the Colorado Rural Technology Program, Community Access TV of Boulder, Denver Community TV, Olshansky Consulting, Radio Reading Service of the Rockies, Rocky Mountain Elementary, Sobel Consulting, the University of Colorado at Boulder, Very Special Arts Colorado, and Young Audiences.
Virtual Chautauqua can be found at . Mr. Quezada's "tour" and those of other teachers are linked to the "Education Center" of Virtual Chautauqua.