Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 12, 1992 TAG: 9202120156
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Long
INFORMATION NETWORK SIGNS ON AT HIGH SCHOOL
From a tiny room inside Pulaski County High School, Phil Vickers and his five computers function as an increasingly sophisticated communications center for the school.He already had activated a program this year to automatically telephone the home of any student absent from school if a parent or guardian had not called to let the office know. Also this year, he printed out all the school's report cards from computerized records.
On Monday, he used a computer to telephone the homes of 188 parents to leave a recorded message about Scholastic Aptitude Test plans. "We just keep adding more to it," he said.
And soon he will be overseeing a communications system that will offer daily information to the homes of all 1,676 students.
"It's just basically a computer with 12 phone lines," he said. "I've had a lot of fun with this. I've kind of been on the technical end."
Teachers' messages about daily classwork and homework assignments will come on line March 2 for ninth-graders, March 4 for 10th graders, March 9 for 11th graders and be fully operational March 11.
Letters will be sent to all homes, with a magnet that can be stuck on a refrigerator or other metal surface with the system's telephone number and a place to write in the student identification number.
The new addition was the subject of a PTA informational program Monday night, including a skit performed by the Pulaski County High School Players fresh from winning district honors in Roanoke last weekend.
They portrayed a family with three students who made great use of the "Cougar Information Network," each mention of which prompted a small but harmonious choir in the background to sing out, "Hallelujah!"
When the network comes on line next month, it will open the communication doors of the school wider than ever.
Parents or students will be able to telephone 674-4357 after 5 p.m. each day, punch in a four-digit student identification number, and hear each of that student's teachers outline what happened in class that day, what homework is expected tomorrow and how parents can help.
Callers can press other numbers and get a seven-day athletic calendar or general calendar of school events, daily announcements for students, or information on administration, athletics, band, choir, drama, guidance and vocational areas.
Voice mailboxes will be added for clubs, organizations and activities. Callers can press 411 for a directory of mailboxes and what numbers to press for them.
A coach bringing an athletic team back from a competition could call from elsewhere and leave a message that parents can access that the bus is running late and will arrive at a different time than originally scheduled. Other uses for the system also are planned.
Principal Thomas DeBolt said all announcements will be updated daily. "It's the only way it will work."
There is one catch: To access the system, homes must have Touch-Tone telephones. Most do. Those that don't can switch for $10.80, plus 60 cents a month.
Each teacher's message will will be about 30 to 45 seconds long. All the messages could run 2 1/2 to less than five minutes, depending on how many classes a student has.
Homework has been a problem, said teacher Joel Stuart. A teacher will start a lesson "and you find out maybe 10 out of 30 did the homework," he said. "Do I reteach the entire class or do I throw it all away and go on to the next lesson?"
With the Cougar hot line, students will have no excuse for not knowing their homework assignments or when tests are scheduled, even if they are not in school on a particular day.
The new computer and communications equipment cost more than $18,000, and the extra phone lines are $22 a month. But supporters of the hot line say it will be worth the investment.
The idea is to improve school communication with parents and get homework completed by all students. Now, DeBolt said, it is seldom that more than half the students in a class complete their assignments to the teacher's satisfaction.
That is generally true in high schools these days but "we don't have to be like everybody else," he said. "Now technology has given us a clean, convenient way."
"It raises the ante for us as parents," PTA President Howard Sadler said, giving parents the chance to be involved in the education of their children.
Teachers will spend about 15 minutes a day recording their messages, but DeBolt suggests it will be a time-saver, overall. They will not have to re-explain assignments to one or two students at the end of a class, he said, or their lesson plans will not fall apart because not enough class members have completed a homework assignment.
About 200 schools in the nation had tried such a system, and only about 10 high schools. Hampton and Hanover County are the only ones in Virginia. And most of those require callers to punch separate codes for each teacher, rather than having a program where one call can get all the information for a particular student.
"It's one of the first in the state," Sadler said. "It's one of the best in the country. It's home grown."
Vickers is the key figure in its growth. Although he is still listed as a teacher and still teaches a computer language class, Vickers has been informally designated by DeBolt as the school's administrative computer coordinator.
It was Vickers who suggested the software changes, like the one allowing one total-information call instead of five or more, to the companies bidding on the project. TeleWorks of Blacksburg got the job.
"We really wanted it to go that route," he said. The only other school he knows about that has done so is in Georgia.
"I would like to call all 120 parents [of his students] every day. I just can't do that. This will take care of my problem," he said.
Forget your assignment? To reach the Cougar Information Network, call 674-4357 after 5 p.m.