US/ND-5: Final Comments

Final Comments

Frank Odasz (franko@bigsky.dillon.mt.us)
Thu, 26 Sep 96 9:13:29 MDT 

Week Five; Final Comments
From: Frank Odasz
      Director of Big Sky Telegraph

I've directed the Big Sky Telegraph network since 1988, based at
a Western Montana College of The Univ. of Montana, a teachers
college in a town of 4,000, Dillon, MT. The project started by
providing free modems and online courses in "Microcomputer
Telecommunications" to rural teachers in one and two room
schools. Leveraging through common sense "affordable and
appropriate" connectivity has always been our emphasis. 

There have been many special projects conducted on BST over the
years, demonstrating how an online system can support teacher-
driven innovations. We've had to keep changing along with the
technology. Our biggest impact has been encouraging others to
create educational and/or community networks with an emphasis on
'Real Benefits for Real People.' Our challenge remains unchanged;
to make people aware of the benefits of telecomputing.

With the arrival of local flat rate Internet the good news is
most folks now have SLIP access, the bad news is that group
conferencing has somewhat disappeared from the scene for many
folks, replaced by solo web browsing. Citizens need an easy way
to create their own group conferences. Groupwork skills for a
global distributed knowledge economy take more to develop that is
currently appreciated, IMHO. BST plans to implement web-
conferencing and offer a new slate of online courses in the web
format, appropriate for international/multicultural support of
lifelong learning.

Use of BST's Internet email cost $50/year for an account and the
cost of phone serves started at 1 cent per page transmitted
globally through long distance dial-up exchange, for a few years
we used 800#'s until we ran out of money and realized this didn't
teach self-sufficiency. Offline readers are still an elegantly
cost-effective 'trick,' particularly the newer web-based
autoexchange software Resnova is supposed to be coming out with.
(Have not used it, personally.)

I've posted several documents on the above themes in the info-ren
archives, thanks to Bob, and would be happy to serve as an
ongoing resource for anyone interested. "Value-pull, not Tech-
Push" and "People First, Technology Second" are two strong
suggestions. Someday, I hope to be able to tell the full human
story behind Big Sky Telegraph; our motto has been "You're
limited only by your imagination."
http://macsky.bigsky.dillon.mt.us/

Godspeed to the Future,
Frank Odasz


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/  \  Frank Odasz; franko@bigsky.dillon.mt.us
 Western Montana College of the University of Montana
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