US/ND-1: Re:rural and remote
Re:rural and remote
Mary Emery (memery@lcsc.edu)
Wed, 28 Aug 1996 11:27:56 -0700 (PDT)
We are looking at addressing the rural and remote question by linking ed
and library access to a community cooperative that will provide last-mile
dial-up access to remote communities. so far so good.
But since many of the people in these remote areas last the resources to
participate in dial-up access, we still have a problem in addressing
universal access.
mary emery
On Wed, 28 Aug 1996,
Richard Buro wrote:
> >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. So a $ 6 million
> technology project done right would have $ 2 million in hard-/software, $ 2
> million in training, and $ 2 million in tech support. I know that sounds
> optimistic and perhaps too simplistic, but reality states that if you look
> at total cost pictures, you are spending about that much to do all the
> pieces anyway.
>
> 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
> able to handle about 75% of all the problems related to technology -- most
> of the time it's a disconnected wire, or a server that needs to be rebooted.
> We can train our own staff to handle simple problems and to complete a
> troubleshooting problem report to direct technicians to the right problems.
> 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 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.
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