Bering Strait School District

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http://www.bssd.org/

http://209.165.175.132/

Bering Strait School District (BSSD) is a school district in northwestern Alaska, United States, serving approximately 1,700 students in grades K-12 in fifteen isolated villages. All schools in the district serve students of all ages, and most classrooms are multi-age.

1 Communities
2 Academics
3 Schools
4 External links

[edit] Communities

The district covers a roadless area of about 80,000 square miles (200,000 km²), roughly the size of Minnesota and North Dakota combined. The student population is roughly 98% Alaska Native, including Yup'ik, Siberian Yup'ik, and Inupiat Eskimos. Travel between villages is by air; the nearest road connection to the outside world is almost 300 air miles east of the district office in Unalakleet.

The communities in the district are traditional Eskimo villages which rely on subsistence activities such as hunting marine mammals and migratory birds, and gathering berries. Native dance and traditional crafts such as walrus ivory carving are still strong. At least four villages practice traditional whaling. There are few cash economy jobs, and the school is most often the largest employer.

Russia is visible from four district schools with the naked eye, and from the Diomede School's steerable Dateliner Webcam, so called because the International Date Line is 1.5 miles (2.4 km) from the camera.

The route of the Iditarod runs through six district villages, where it is a major event. Many current and former Iditarod mushers live in the district, and participate in school activities focusing on the history and cultural traditions of mushing.

[edit] Academics

The district, working with the Alaska Staff Development Network, the Re-inventing Schools Coalition, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has created a standards-based curriculum and abolished grade level groupings. Students progress through a mastery-based series of standards levels in ten content areas, rather than traditional subjects, in order to graduate.

BSSD recently launched a MediaWiki-based curriculum content project, the OpenContent Initiative. This wiki system is one of only a few in the United States open to collaborative curriculum development for all teachers, students, and district administrators. Outside visitors and other educators are allowed, even encouraged, to help the district improve and reform its standards and curriculum resources. The wiki content is annually evaluated by curriculum committees to make changes to the official documents used daily.

BSSD plans on extending this into a WikiBook project this year, much like the South African National Curriculum project, and is leading an effort of school districts in Alaska to collaborate over distance using wiki technology.

All district schools are receiving basic training on how to involve students in adding content to Wikipedia as a meaningful part of classroom instruction, as opposed to simply consuming others' contributions. This focus on Place-Based Education is a priority of the district's leadership.