Joanne Healy, while pursuing her CITE project goals, wrote two grant submissions in the last two months. She notes, “It’s important for new teachers to shift their pedagogy to a more collaborative approach based on continuous improvement of learning with 21st-century mobile devices.’ Her proposal work parallels and supports recent SOE initiatives.
While Joanne hopes for feedback from her submission for the BLaST grant was for biomedical research she admits it was a warm-up for the larger Federal grant from the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP).  “I really, really want to bring humanoid robots Milo and Nao to Alaska.’
Dr. Healy indicated, “the most exciting part of writing the OSEP Grant was my ‘dream team’. As a CITE fellow, I have two wonderful course designers’ support. Plus ramping up pedagogy in a K-12 setting for teachers was interesting enough for additional members of the UAF CTL team to offer some in-kind technical support. SCORE! Top that off with the School of Education, with Apple’s technical support/training, rolling out a 1:1 iPad/laptop program making a change in the pedagogical approach to education.

People make the difference

Joanne Healy recounts that the path to grant submission included a veritable who’s who: the Apple rep for Alaska, Ryan, provided a list of school districts embracing the 1:1 initiative and making pedagogical changes in teaching areas with youth. Those areas would need support. They were the districts she contacted. Don Peterson, Assistant Professor of Technical Education and CoI. Nicole Sletterink, Information Specialist for the School of Education (SOE) faculty and staff and Debra Kouda, UAFs Information Technology Engagement Specialist, all signed on to be a main part of the team that will make a big change in the future of three schools districts if this grant goes through.
When asked, ‘how many people did you work with to prep and submit the OSEP grant?’ a bit of time goes by. Here’s just a list of roles, those missed must be due to sleep deprivation on the part of the IDer or Joanne.
Nao creator, Apple rep, SOE departmental staff, the dean, the fiscal officer, THE grant writer, an outside grant evaluator, instructional designers, managers and director, grant coordinators, 10 school district coordinators, state senator, senator’s office staff, the SPED directors from multiple school districts, staff from the Office of Sponsored programs.
Best quote from Dr. Healy regarding the whole process:

“Patty has done SO MANY grants, she said ‘just whip out a 50 page narrative and I’ll help with the rest’ she is a joy to work with!

By this time, there is no backing out, no sleeping and tons of editing. Submission corresponded with the week before this spring semester started!    Dr. Bunsen, being on sabbatical, stated, “This is the most fun I’ve had all year.’ Clearly we are all delusional, although we make a great collaborative team.
The stars are aligned, how can they (OSEP) refuse funding?
Writing was a collaborative effort between Dr. Healy and Janene McMahan
Image below is an interactive MindMap created using MindMeister
 
Your browser is not able to display frames. Please visit the mind map: Journey to  a Proposal on Mind Mapping – MindMeister.