A Summary of Alaskool Web Site Survey Results: What's Useful and What Can Be Improved?

Abstract

"This report summarizes the results of a survey the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) and First Alaskans Institute (FAI) developed to determine how useful the Alaskool Web site- www.alaskool.org-is and how it might be improved. To understand the survey results, it's helpful to know the background of the Alaskool Web site. The Alaskool Web site is the product of the Alaska Native Curriculum and Teacher Development Project, designed in the late 1990s by Paul Ongtooguk and John Pingayak-two Native educators - and Bill McDiarmid, who at that time was the director of ISER. They saw that resources teachers and others needed for Alaska Native education were very scarce, and they proposed to fill the need by creating an online collection of materials on Alaska Native history, culture, and languages, as well as curricula and other products teachers and students could use. Such a collection, on a Web site, would not only bring together in one place a wide array of materials, but would also make them instantly accessible to residents of remote rural communities.