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

DATE: TUESDAY, June 6, 1995                   TAG: 9506060112
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LISA APPLEGATE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SHAWSVILLE                                 LENGTH: Medium

RURAL SCHOOLS JUST GOT A LOT BIGGER

Beginning this fall, students at Shawsville High School can take a Christiansburg High pre-calculus class without a permission slip - or a car.

The two Montgomery County high schools, plus Radford University and Virginia Western Community College, received a $165,500 grant Monday from Bell Atlantic to develop a fiber-optic network of interactive classrooms.

The program, called distance learning, will use video and audio equipment to provide two-way communication between teachers and other classrooms.

The link will provide not only the ability to watch and listen to a lecture, but will enable students at different locations to ask questions and send data to the teacher.

Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, a distance-learning advocate, attended the check presentation at Shawsville High and said students will thrive in this new generation of interactive learning.

"Students love technology," he said. "There's something about using it that makes them more attentive and more successful."

Boucher helped set up the first link in Lee County two years ago. His goal is to link all 83 high schools, community colleges and universities in the 9th Congressional District. Thirty schools will be hooked up by this fall.

Bell Atlantic committed $1 million for seven years to statewide distance learning projects. Local grants go to the New Century Communications Network, a nonprofit corporation set up to administer distance learning funds in the Roanoke and New River regions.

Boucher said the link is a tool to reduce disparity between Southwest Virginia schools and larger, wealthier districts in Northern Virginia and elsewhere.

Many rural schools do not have the class size or teacher availability to offer advanced math, science and foreign language courses every semester. Including those students in classrooms at other schools, Boucher said, balances the learning opportunities throughout the state.

Herman Bartlett, Montgomery County schools superintendent and the New Century Communications Network president, said he looks forward to eliminating inequities within the general population as well.

"Some communities don't have access to information. Teachers can't get training. This will improve the well-being of communities," he said.

Radford University's new president, Doug Covington, agreed. "We don't want to be a stone in a glass of water; we want to be an Alka-Seltzer and interact with the community."

Radford and Virginia Western will not be ready for interactive classes until next spring.

Renovations already have begun on Christiansburg High and will begin next week for Shawsville, said technology supervisor Larry Arrington.

Eight television monitors will be added: four for students to view other classrooms and four for teachers to monitor students. Automated cameras will follow a teacher's every move. Microphones will be sensitive enough to hear a book page turning, Arrington said.

Classes will remain small - probably four or five students to each of the monitors. For now, conflicts in class scheduling won't be a problem because both high schools recently switched to block class schedules, he said.