Welcome to the Collaborations List!
Aleck Johnson (johnson@itc.org)
Mon, 17 Mar 1997 13:41:18 -0500
On behalf of myself and Bill Wright, your moderator for this discussion, I'd
like to welcome you all to the collaborations list. The purpose of this
list is to share some of the experiences we've all had as NIE grant
recipients on:
* the value of collaborative efforts
* how to set them up
* how they work in practice
* the "do's and don'ts" of collaborative efforts
* how these collaborative efforts help improve education
* any additional topics we want to discuss!
Bill and I would like to keep this discussion fairly focused, at least
initially, on how all of the participants in this discussion have actually
used collaborations in their projects, and what their experiences have been.
Once we've all had a chance to get a handle on what each of us has done, we
can move on to figuring out some of the generalized lessons we've learned
from our experiences. Also, if there are additional topics you think we
should discuss, or additional information you'd like to share, please feel
free to do so at any time.
For this first part of our discussion, I think it might be useful if each of
you could post a short description of your project, and then provide a bit
more detail on the role of collaborations in your project. If your project
has a web site, please post the URL so that the rest of us can get a
slightly better sense of what you're doing! To post to the list, send your
message to collaboration@info-ren.pitt.edu.
Our organization, the International Telecomputing Consortium, received a
grant from NSF to do a policy study on rural telecommunications access.
We've been looking at policies in a number of states that are either aimed
explicitly at furthering rural access or have had the effect of doing so.
One of the things that we've found is that collaborative efforts play a
*crucial* role in rural areas. Collaboration and cooperation between groups
(be they for-profits, non-profits, government, education, or library
institutions) is often the only way to make access affordable. It's also
the only way, in many cases, to bring any sort of real access into a rural
area, since the telecommunications companies often don't see a market in
these areas. A strong collaborative project, pulling diverse elements of
the community together to aggregate demand for telecommunications services,
is often the only way to convince providers to bring access into rural areas.
One nascent example of this sort of action taking place can been seen in
Northern New Mexico, where a group of businesses, educators, librarians, and
local government organizations are pooling together to try to build a
network to reach into all of the northern part of the state. One effect of
such a network would be to bring access into a number of areas where there
is no local internet service provider, and "advanced" services (such as
leased lines or even ISDN) are not available (let alone affordable!) This
"network", which currently only exists in the minds of some folks in New
Mexico, could extend the tool of telecommunications to a number of
disadvantaged rural communities which otherwise would simply be forced to go
without.
More information on ITC's Affordable Access, Rural Online project is
available from our web site at http://www.itc.org/aaron/
Aleck Johnson, ITC
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Aleck Johnson johnson@itc.org
Research Associate 1250 24th St. NW Ste. 300
International Telecomputing Consortium Washington, DC 20037
voice: 202.466.0533 fax: 202.466.0523
Check out the Affordable Access, Rural Online Homepage at:
<http://www.itc.org/aaron/>
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