The Center for Applied Technologies in Education (CATE) once again has proven that where there's technology, there's a way, successfully executing the ground-breaking semester of a cultural-exchange program three years in the making that links-via interactive video-secondary students in Western New York and Costa Rica. The project, dubbed Project Loop, is the first of its kind both for UB and Central America, and the only program as such currently taking place in the United States.

CATE Director Donald J. Jacobs said the project-in line with the center's mission of education outreach-is about creating "a new learning community" through the use of technology.

"We are now in a place where we've got enough technology...to have developed pilot coursework," he said, adding that most significant about the project's September launch is "having pulled the technology together-successfully connecting our organizations."

In celebration of Project Loop's first successful semester, Jacobs and Christine Chelus, manager of technology application development for CATE, will be in Costa Rica tomorrow to participate in a ribbon-cutting ceremony that will take place live at 10:30 a.m. Students and faculty at Buffalo's City Honors High School and Clarence High School, as well as sites at four separate high schools in Costa Rica and with guests in Baldy Hall's distance-learning classroom 200G, will participate simultaneously in the ceremony that is open to the public.

Three separate courses were part of the pilot project, and all told, 160 students-including high-school-age students as well as teachers-were enrolled. The first-an advanced Spanish course, entirely conversational and focusing on Latin American culture-was taught each Monday evening from Costa Rica's Lincoln School, a private high school in San José, by Leonardo Sancho to students at City Honors and Clarence high schools.

"There's a tremendous interest on the part of high schools to become a part of this," Jacobs said, "and there's a tremendous interest on the part of universities to look for new audiences."

Two other courses also were part of this experimental semester of learning: "English as a Second Language," taught each Tuesday evening by Grover Cleveland High School teacher Suki Kim, and "Current Educational Trends," a professional-development course for high-school teachers in Costa Rica that was team-taught every other Monday night by Steve Ludwig, director of technology for Clarence Central Schools and adjunct instructor in UB's Graduate School of Education, and Linda Hammerton-Morris, a Spanish teacher at Clarence High School.

"Certainly, the broader purpose here is to begin to connect the kids and the communities and teachers—for the purposes of creating some international (and) cultural exchange,” Jacobs said.

“This puts UB out in the front of developing technologies,” he said of the program. “UB has a very strong and prominent national role in the use of educational technologies,” he noted, and has assumed “a leadership role in developing these technologies to provide technical assistance training education in the developing world.”

Courses—a combination of synchronous and asynchronous technologies—are comprised of about one-third real-time videoconferencing and approximately two-thirds Web-based, or online, work, according to Chelus.

The enterprise, a “cross-pollinization of thoughts” between the United States and Costa Rica—some 3,000 miles apart—is “wholly unique in Central America and to UB as well,” Jacobs said.

“(We are) the only group in the country doing this kind of project.”

Now more comfortable with the technology and in curricular exchange, Jacobs said the center is hoping to offer courses for credit in the spring. Students who were part of the inaugural semester participated on a strictly volunteer basis.

“We felt it was pretty high stakes to put students and teachers in an…alien technology environment. (But) we’re ready to now roll this out, with some credit-bearing coursework,” said Jacobs, adding that the center will continue working closely with Millard Fillmore College’s Distance Learning Office. He noted that Verizon was in charge of engineering for the project.

Next semester, CATE plans to offer a course on conflict resolution, taught both in English and Spanish to Costa Rican students, as well as a course taught by Costa Ricans who have worked in the region’s rainforests, called “Rainforest Experience,” Chelus said. That course, she said, will be offered primarily to students interested in the environment, biology or science in general.

The idea of sharing a “common educational experience” through technology, Jacobs said, began with a conversation in 1997 between CATE and Costa Rica’s then-minister of education.

“We were invited to talk with administration of the Lincoln School,” he said, keeping in mind the thrust of the project would be using “advanced telecommunication technologies to deliver primarily education and social-services training.”

“The notion,” he said, “was to connect high schools and colleges and universities in Western New York with the Lincoln School.

“Certainly, from the standpoint of students and teachers in Buffalo, there was terrific interest in Costa Rica—it has a lot of panache, having a great tradition of 'green' tourism and environmentally friendly policy,” he said.

A similar project is in the works with educators in El Salvador, and discussions also are under way with those in Guatemala, Jacobs said.

Jacobs, who in 1995 founded CATE—formerly known as the Center for Applied Research in Interactive Technologies—has worked in Central America, Africa and Eastern Europe for nine years toward the end of reaching and enriching the developing world through technology. The goal, he said, is to “make stronger connections between our country and other countries in the spirit of creating a more global student base.”

Jacobs said he “most definitely” sees this kind of partnering not only as feasible, but trend-setting for the future of education.

“Particularly with some new technologies, but through other (academic) departments, working on some innovative technologies, (and) using the Internet as a backbone, (the mode will become) very cost-effective,” he said.

The project—scheduled to run through the end of April—is funded primarily through a $140,000 Costa Rican USA (CRUSA) Foundation grant co-written by CATE and Costa Rican educators. Supplemental funds were provided through CATE, a unit of UB’s Office of Public Service and Urban Affairs.