US/ND-1: Re: A teachers perspective initially

Re: A teachers perspective initially

Link Shadley (lshadley@seasurf.com)
Tue, 27 Aug 1996 22:27:16 -0700 

Jan Bolluyt wrote:
> 
> When do "students" stop their "studenthood".  At what point do we deny
> subsidized access.  College? Junior College? Early graduates? Adult
> education?  GED students? "life-long" learners?
> 
> Jan

Excellent point.  If we subsidize educational instutions, does this mean
only those within the bricks and mortar buildings, or does it apply to
students doing homework, or home schooling, or teachers from home?  An
interesting debate has been going on here in Oregon where a school
consortium is building out an Internet access network for 'education
only'.  In the urban areas, that works fine.  But in the rural and
remote areas, their 'educational only' network is causing a real
problem.  Many small communities in rural Oregon are working toward
either funding a POP for local access or enticing an ISP to come in
based upon some guaranteed number of accounts.  Along comes the school
with their 'education only' network and insists the school connect
through them.  That takes away potential accounts in the community,
requires duplicate POP hardware and lines, and ends up taking away from
community resources.

I prefer to view our communities as just that, communities.  In our
region (northwest Oregon) we are promoting infrastructure, training and
access across all facets of the community including schools, business,
government, agencies, private citizens, libraries and organizations.  

Some really neat partnerships between schools and other players have
developed which will reap benefits far beyond the sharing of
infrastructure costs.  

I catch a lot of flack from some educators in Oregon who are not able to
see beyond the traditional fence at the end of their turf, and I also
get some support from those who can see into the future a bit and
realize that the Internet will probably merge with the telephone system
and it doesn't make much sense to have a school telephone network
separate from the one for the rest of the community.

I look forward to the continuing discussion here and will try to inject
a smile or two with the written word to temper my soap box verbiage as I
would do in person.


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*  In Balance,  Link Shadley                          *
*  LANCE - Ecotrust - Clatsop Community College       *
*  (503) 325-9657  lshadley@orednet.org               *
*  lshadley@seasurf.com                               *
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