Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 12, 1995 TAG: 9507120060
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DUBLIN LENGTH: Medium
The staff of the Southwest Virginia Governor's School had been working more than 14 hours a day that week to prepare an application for a $2.6 million federal grant to provide high-speed lines and computer access to schools throughout the New River Valley and west into Southwest Virginia.
But the book-size application was not quite complete the evening before it was due in Washington, D.C. As Governor's School Executive Director Margaret "Pat" Duncan was finishing her fine-tuning, she wondered aloud if there was any possibility that the UPS center in Dublin would hold its Washington delivery truck until the application was finished.
Sure they would, said Robert Carlson, a faculty member at the school. He called, and UPS agreed. When Duncan got confirmation the next day that the document had arrived on time, she became so enthusiastic that Carlson had to remind her that it still had to be approved.
"We'll know in September. But it looks good," Duncan told members of the Governor's School board Tuesday. "The main thing this will do, if this goes through, we'll have an Internet link."
Over five years, the grant would pay for lines and computer equipment for area schools as well as Internet training for teachers from kindergarten through high school.
The NASA Langley Research Center has designed a network that can provide access to the Internet at a relatively low cost. The network is already in place in one other region in Virginia. The New River Valley location would be the second.
The system allows connections between the Governor's School and schools in other localities by telephone lines, rather than by more expensive fiber-optic cable other networks often require.
The Virginia Space Grant Consortium, which is backing the application, would provide a five-day Internet training session for teachers and a team of university professors as consultants.
"Through this network, students and teachers can access a virtually unlimited pool of knowledge, information and expertise via the Internet," the application's summary says.
"This will provide greater resources for research as well as allow participants to confer with experts and colleagues in their fields of interest. Educators can access lesson plans from various resources prepared by instructional technologists. Access to this network will be through computers and extended media centers in the schools, work stations in community public libraries, and call-in lines to the schools," it says.
Right now, Duncan said, many schools the region have no access to an Internet communications center and that makes using the Internet too expensive for financially strapped school systems. But the grant would cover that access cost for five years, she said, and, by that time, the situation may have changed.
The grant would be the bridge between now and the future, she said.
The board delayed choosing officers for the coming year because it lacked a quorum. It will meet again at 1 p.m. Tuesday at the school.
by CNB