US/ND-5: Fifth week question
Fifth week question
Gerry Hamor (ghamor@mail.vcnet.com)
Fri, 27 Sep 1996 20:01:13 -0700
Greetings everyone,
I hope this seminar has been as helpful to others as it has been to me. I
have enjoyed reading about the progress that has been made in
telecommunications in other areas of the US. Thank you, Bob, Laurie, and the
folks at Information Renaissance, for making this seminar possible. I hope
to establish continuing communication with several participants in the near
future.
Fifth week question:
What successful telecommunications projects have you been involved with?
Did these projects depend upon any special telecommunications rates? If
so, give a brief description of these rates and indicate whether you think
these rates might be jeopardized by new Universal Service subsidies.
(This could happen if, for example, state PUCs were to decree that new
subsidies supersede old rate structures.)
We are in the building stage as we begin to develop projects. I used a
personal shell account to first bring the internet to my school. Using a
text only format, our students, with adult assistance, were able to seek
information that related to their class activities. When PPP accounts became
available through a new local ISP in June '95, I established a partnership
with the the owners of the new business and they agreed to provide a free
single line account to the school - an offer that was later extended to the
other schools in the district. I developed our school web page (posted Oct
'95), and provided inservice presentations to staff, parents, and other
sdministrators. During the '95-'96 school year groups of Gifted and Talented
students received instruction from me in html and wrote passages that were
put on our web page. We communicated with a college student from our
community who was living in Jerusalem last year and one classroom developed
email contacts with students in another state. We look forward to activities
this year that will involve our students in more projects that connect us to
others around the world.
At this stage, thanks to our generous ISP, we have had free access to the
www. As more classrooms are connected and our district WAN expands, this
good fortune will probably not last.
It is my hope that our classrooms and classrooms throughout the nation will
become connected and will be able to use internet resources without paying
rates that make it necessary to cut back in other important areas of
education. We are currently deciding whether to spend money on improved
technology or on early literacy. While our educational needs exceed our
ability to meet them , we should not have to sacrifice tomorrow's literacy
(telecommunication skills) for today's literacy (decoding/encoding), or vice
versa. Literacy in the 21st century will require all of these skills.
If our local fledgling ISP can take it upon itself to connect our local
schools as a community service - free, then it can be argued that our giant
telcos, faced with the Universal Service legislation, can extend the same
consideration to all classrooms and reimburse the ISPs for their portion of
the service.
Gerry Hamor
Principal
Dos Caminos School
Camarillo , CA
http://www.vcnet.com/doscaminos