Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, October 18, 1994                   TAG: 9410180082
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ELECTRIC CLASS

OK, maybe students in rural classrooms of Montgomery County and elsewhere in Southwest Virginia won't actually be seeing Paree - except, perhaps, in virtual reality.

But electronic opportunities for them to visit faraway places - to be instructed by world-class teachers in economics, geography, history, math, science and foreign languages - are expanding, in important ways, the horizons of education in our region.

A year ago, four high schools in Southwest Virginia were linked via fiber-optic phone lines and interactive TV sets in their classrooms to community colleges, opening up the possibility of advanced courses and specialized instruction that rural public-school districts might otherwise never be able to afford.

Now, a new venture in electronic teaching is beginning in Montgomery County, where a $99,000 planning grant from the National Science Foundation will give five of the county's schools a high-speed, direct link to the Internet - the world's largest computer network. It's the first project of its kind to put a rural school division on line with Internet.

The grant, won by the school system in collaboration with the Blacksburg Electronic Village and Virginia Tech, virtually puts the world's instructional resources at the students' fingertips. They can tap into libraries from Tokyo to Tulsa, have e-mail conversations with researchers and scholars, possibly get help with their homework from specialists around the globe.

Granted, it remains to be seen how effective such high-tech hookups will be in improving academic achievement. No one should oversell the technology. E-mail missives, for example, can never replace personal contact and stimulating verbal exchanges with good classroom teachers (not to mention the mind-stretching act of sustained reading). Nevertheless, the new technology is promising, in part, because it is increasingly interactive.

Nor should anyone believe that electronic classrooms will end disparities in educational opportunities between rural, generally poorer, school districts in Virginia and more populous and wealthier districts. Richmond still needs to develop a more equitable funding formula. Nevertheless, by broadening the quality and extent of course offerings and instruction, distance learning can be a valuable tool in reducing educational disparities.

It's a fine thing in any case that Southwest Virginia is getting on the map of the informational highway. The likely destination is better public education and broader horizons for the region's youth.