US/ND-1: Re: topic suggestions

Re: topic suggestions

Rex Buddenberg (budden@nps.navy.mil)
Wed, 28 Aug 96 09:07:03 -0700 

> >None of this connectivity is of any use if teachers don't know how to
> >use it. How will they be trained and by whom? What provisions will be
> >made for technical support after installation? What about experienced
> >teachers and/or administrators being offered supplements to support
> >their co-workers?
> 
> Hi, Jim.  This is an excellent set of queries.  In my honest opinion (IMHO),
> we need to have our curricula driving our networks, not the other way round.
> We also need to realize that regardless of how much money we target at
> "stuff," that is only 33% of the project.  Another 33% is training, and the
> final 33% is technical support for sustainability. 

These numbers are consistent with business survey data (it's skimpy
but there is some).

> 
> I believe also that we must train our own people to work on our own stuff
> for the most part.  Aides, maintenance staff, custodial staff, etc. must be

Correct again.  The Scylla and Charibdis that edu folks routinely
founder on are:
	1.  What's a complete system?  I've seen bond issues that
get wires in the wall ... nothing more.  I've seen the telcos offer
'free' connectivity and school personnel thinking that their troubles
are over.  The stories abound.  
	Complicated by the fact that this is a very fragmented
industry.  No single vendor sells a 'complete system' and the
integrators who can put it together tend to be a suspect lot.
We probably can't change the industry and I'm not sure we'd want
to -- likely to get what we ask for;-), so the remaining alternative
is enough education invested in the K12 community that they can
recognize complete systems themselves.  
	We've been working with the K12 school system in two counties
here for about 3 years (I dispatch my grad students in teams to
work on their projects ... it's my lab and my students learn what
I think they need to know).  I've watched with gratification
several folks come over that learning curve and gain a very good
idea; similarly some that we've worked with seem hopeless.
	In this regard, one of my student teams this quarter is
doing some curriculum development -- an outline for 'net shop'
to go alongside auto shop and wood shop in the HS vocational
curricula.  If it works out, will be on our K12 WWW page in
a month or so.

	2.  None of the so-called technology plans (that all
schools around here are supposed to have) make any acknowledgement
toward the life cycle costs you mention.  Ignorance, political
incorrectness (not saleable), stubbornness ... I don't know why.
But I haven't seen one in a school yet that comes close to
recognizing these life cycle costs.


> I feel that our own people can train each other using cadres and teams.  We
> have been successfully doing this in Texas for several years with the Texas
> Education Network's Master Trainer project.
> 
The hardest part of this problem is jump-starting.  How do you get
the initial cadres to seed the train-the-trainer programs?

> The real problem with be with remote and rural areas -- lots of places have
> little or no service provision.  If we want true universal service in
> telecommunications, we must look at it like the REA did back in the 30's and
> 40's -- every house gets it -- that's true universal service.  I know the
> thrust is for schools in this legislation, but that is also what needs to
> drive this -- every red school house gets connected.

In the '70s, Alaska was looking at a big oil windfall and a bunch
of legislators had a burr under the saddle to move the capital
from Juneau to somewhere between Anchorage and Fairbanks -- to
get the government closer to the people.  News: there's no place
in Alaska where a bricks/mortar capital will be 'close to the
people'.  Eventually, the mania subsided and a goodly chunk of
the money was spent on getting edu tv (satellite dishes and the
like) into the schools in all those ~100 population villages.
	There are several technological fixes (including, among
others, the coming Low Earth Orbit satellite infrastructure)
if we can get an economic model that works.  

Rex Buddenberg