CENIC 2019: Integrating the Arts into Global R&E Networks - The SFJAZZ Case Study (3/18/2019)

Speakers: Mount Allen, Nai-Ching (Mercy) Hwong, Tamima Noorzay, Matthew Rocca, and Daryl Rysberg

CENIC’s connectivity for public schools, libraries, museums, and science centers across California plus the global peering relationships made possible through this network bring rich, world-class cultural arts and sciences to California communities and beyond. Community-based cultural institutions such as SFJAZZ, the Exploratorium, the California Academy of Sciences, and the Getty Museum are using CalREN for high-definition virtual collaboration. For example, SFJAZZ’s School Day Concerts, Exchanges from the Stage, bring live, interactive jazz (America’s indigenous artistic expression) to communities unlikely to experience a performance of this nature. This session will explore the experiences of four public middle schools in California and Washington that participated in a jazz program celebrating the United Nations' 70th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This distributed, virtual collaboration used pioneering applications such as UltraGrid, JackTrip, and LOLA over CalREN and was supported through partnerships with Cisco and AT&T. A panel from The Preuss School at UC San Diego, one of the four participating public schools and a first adopter of this technology, will share their insights about engaging the cultural arts in real time with diverse student communities. The session will explore the future of arts integration and technology, expanding the conversation of STEM to STEAM through the use of project-based learning methodologies showcasing agile principles, and contextualizing a culturally responsive jazz metaphor of particular significance in historically marginalized and academically underperforming urban public school settings. Research strongly supports the connection between the arts and improved academic engagement and achievement in public schools across the nation, regardless of community socioeconomic status (SES). In recognition of the historically unbalanced educational and cultural resource distribution between lower and higher SES communities in America, new and innovative approaches to addressing the achievement gap are emerging. Global research and education network can provide a tool to those hoping to develop such approaches.