Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 16, No. 589.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
Submit to: humanist@princeton.edu
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 07:10:14 +0000
From: NINCH-ANNOUNCE <david@ninch.org>
Subject: DIGITAL PROMISE: Support and Action Requested
NINCH ANNOUNCEMENT
News on Networking Cultural Heritage Resources
from across the Community
Wednesday March 26, 2003
DIGITAL PROMISE PROJECT
Legislative Activity: Support Requested
http://www.digitalpromise.org
The ambitious Digital Promise project is moving forward. There appears a
real opportunity to instantiate its proposed Digital Opportunity Investment
Trust (intended to transform education, training and lifelong learning in
the U.S.) through proposed legislation introduced by Rep Ed Markey (D, MA)
and Rep Fred Upton (R, MI). <http://www.digitalpromise.org/MARKEY_013_xml.pdf>.
Below is an appeal to help forward a proposed merger of the Upton and
Markey bills, specifically to include Markey's Digital Dividends Trust
Fund. Read on for more details.
David Green
===========
>>Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 16:44:33 -0500
>From: "Digital Promise" <digitalpromise@fas.org>
>>To: "Supporters of Digital Promise" <MurphyAAAA@aol.com>
URGENT - Immediate Action Necessary
The House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet under
Chairman Fred Upton (R, MI) held a hearing yesterday on bills by Rep. Upton
and Rep Ed Markey (D, MA) to establish a trust fund to reimburse the
military and other federal agencies for the cost of moving from spectrum
they now occupy, which is needed for commercial users. Their cost
reimbursement would come from future revenues earned from auctioning the
vacated spectrum. Rep. Markey's bill also establishes a "Digital Dividends
Trust Fund" (essentially, DOIT) from revenues remaining from the auctions
after the federal agencies have been reimbursed.
At the invitation of Chairman Upton, Larry Grossman testified on behalf of
the Digital Promise project in favor of merging the two bills, to include
the educational trust fund in the Upton bill. He received a sympathetic
hearing from members of the Subcommittee. Reps. Dingell (D, MI) and Markey
issued statements strongly in support. You can read his testimony and
their opening statements on the Digitalpromise.org web site.
The Upton, HR 1320 bill is due for mark-up on April 7. Mr. Markey will
seek to add the DOIT provision at that time. However, we face a key
obstacle. As you know, Rep. Billy Tauzin (R, LA) is Chairman of the
Communications Committee. We are told his staff director is strongly
opposed to including the educational trust fund in the Upton bill for
ideological reasons. It is essential, therefore, to try to reach Rep.
Tauzin to let him know how important and beneficial such a fund can be for
the nation's educational system, libraries, museums, universities and other
public interest institutions. It is also essential to have Republican
members of the Subcommittee you may know who might support this effort talk
to Chairman Tauzin personally, urge him to allow the education trust fund
to go forward, even with token funding from the military spectrum
revenues. This would provide an ideal public dividend, supporting both the
needs of national defense and education, two of the country's most
important priorities.
Here's what we need to do:
1. Reach the Republican Members of the Subcommittee and request that they
personally speak to Tauzin.
2. If you have key Republicans in any of these districts ask them to
request the Member to talk to Tauzin
3. If you now any influential Republicans who can call Tauzin directly, NOW
is the time to make the call.
Staff suggests the following subcommittee Members may be helpful:
Bilirakis, FL; Deal, GA; Cubin, WY; Shimkus, IL; Bass, NH; Walden, OR;
Greenwood, PA; Burr, NC.
Below is a one page summary of the rationale for DOIT which may be of
help. If you have any questions please call me at 202-244-7959 or cell:
202-531-7638.
Sincerely,
Anne G. Murphy
Project Director
Digital Promise Project
Phone: 202. 244.7959
cell: 202. 531.7638
email: digitalpromise@fas.org
web: <http://www.digitalpromise.org/>www.digitalpromise.org
=============================================================================
RATIONALE
We recommend the creation of a trust to provide research and innovation in
the areas of technology, education and training. The Trust will have a
direct impact on the future of American society, just as the Morrill Act
and the GI Bill did. We cannot afford to deny national leadership and
coordination of research and improvement for education, training and
technology. The trust created will be essential to American
competitiveness and security in the 21st Century.
Education: America must make a new investment in education for all
citizens if we are to remain competitive in the new global knowledge economy
Jobs: America is losing jobs to workers overseas because we don't have a
competitive, national IT training infrastructure.
Security: America is no longer in a position to play "catch up" with
education and training for the general population..
Life-long Learning: America must provide every opportunity for people over
65 to remain productive, contributing members of society.
Democracy: Democracy thrives when an educated citizenry has access to
information and the critical thinking skills to make informed choices.
What types of projects will the Trust fund to meet these needs?
* Visualization, Modeling, and Simulation could enable students to learn by
doing to better understand difficult or abstract concepts and apply what
they learn in real-world contexts.
* Virtual worlds could offer sophisticated content and challenging
activities that, like popular communications media, are "stickier" and
engage individuals for large amounts of time.
* Intelligent Tutoring Systems could assess student strengths, weaknesses,
and mastery of subject material; generate instruction material tailored to
the progress of an individual student; serve as an "expert" in a subject
matter area; and use a variety of pedagogical approaches - explanations,
guided learning, and coaching among others.
* Large Scale Digital Libraries and Online Museums could offer a
mind-boggling array of multimedia information objects and digital artifacts
for student, teacher and scholarly use, and for building engaging curricula
and learning experiences.
* Distributed Learning and Collaboration could provide learners with
unparalleled opportunities for access to courses globally that integrate
rich multi-media curriculum, expert instruction, and peer collaboration.
* Learning management tools could help students, teachers and other
education professionals better manage learning opportunities, assignments,
and tasks, scheduling analysis of student performance, interventions of
teachers and other education professionals, teacher parent communications,
student account management; and student portfolios.
The Trust will help to overcome existing barriers to meeting these goals by:
- funding much-needed research and development in the areas of information
technology, software design, the process of cognition, learning and memory.
- funding the digitization of America's libraries, museums, universities
and other scientific and cultural repositories to preserve the foundations
of American history and learning and to develop the most comprehensive
learning experiences for the future.
- serving as a center for national leadership and coordination among
business, university and Federal initiatives in these areas which are
currently operating without coordination or integration.
=============================================================================
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