Schools Take The Lead
In a small rural community a private school set up a local area network, including ports to the dorm rooms...
Links
http://www.nsbsd.org/public/North_Slope_Borough_School_District/Home_Page
/Home_Page.html
In a small rural community a private school set up a local area network, including ports to the dorm rooms. Along with other providers the school joined with neighboring public schools and initiated a service for the Town Hall and businesses. The next step will be the involvement of other agencies, such as area health centers. IRENE, the Indian River Education Network in Florida, encourages online chat and bulletin board announcements about school activities from home computers. In addition to its NTIA funding, IRENE has developed a relationship with foundations to begin to reach equity so that technology is available to all homes. Public access computers are available in the local libraries. A relatively isolated rural area, other community organizations and businesses were spurred to join the Internet as an outcome of this project.
At the northernmost point in Alaska near the Arctic circle the North Slope Borough School District covers 88,000 square miles -- the geographically largest district in the US -- with most schools in small villages. Schools are linked through fiber optic cables and satellites. Video and wide area networks are intertwined in this distance ed project; despite the isolation of some schools, a community has evolved. The name of one of the college partners, Sivunmun Ilisagvik, means "a place to prepare for the future" in Inupiat.
The Electronic Community Center, part of the Santa Clara County web site, illustrates the inclusiveness of school-business-service providers networks. Take a look at the Dzantik'i Heeni Middle School, for another example of a school site -- this one prepared by Native Americans.
Kentucky (Louisville) has developed a unique model to integrate the needs of special populations. The network is constructed like a village. Even though Kentucky is small relative to larger states, the model could be used for regions within states.
UCBOE, Union City Online, is noteworthy because students developed resources for the community around the school. For instance, they put up and maintain home pages for agencies, such as a day care center. When the community outside the school fence realizes benefits from technology in the schools, everybody wins!
The Oak Community Network demonstrates the use of the community as a real-life laboratory as well as including components of the other networks in this entry.
Annotation
Developing school-community networks in a well-defined area with a small population is, of course, easier than imagining such networks in a large urban area. The state of Nebraska, for instance, can handle all citizens easily on one network. Schools, however, even in a city can take the lead and connect many agencies on which their students and parent body depend.
