ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 14, 1995 TAG: 9512140074
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
Communities should push schools and libraries onto the information superhighway by 2000, a panel appointed by President Clinton recommended Wednesday.
``We know it's going to happen anyway in 15 to 20 years,'' said Ed McCracken, chief executive officer of Silicon Graphics Inc. and co-chairman of the United States Advisory Council on the National Information Infrastructure.
``What we decided was, why not try to do it earlier? The benefits to the country would be great.''
Connecting all public schools to the Internet would cost about $11 billion, the panel estimated.
Schools, worried they will buy the wrong thing or spend thousands on quickly obsolete equipment, often remain leery of making big computer purchases, the panel noted.
Poorer school districts and those in rural areas face special problems. Often, schools must do extensive renovations simply to get modern phone lines into buildings constructed 50 to 70 years ago.
The panel found success stories others can follow:
In Chester Ridge School District in rural Fishertown, Pa., teachers each year seek corporate grants that provide free Internet access, then use the time to train colleagues and help students.
A radio station in Lansing, Mich., formed a partnership with seven schools to help students e-mail questions about current events to the news staff, the White House, the governor and people around the world.
At Rosa Parks Interparish Elementary in Baltimore, a corporate grant helped students talk via computer with the legendary civil rights activist for whom the school is named.
In Taos, N.M., students and adults use a university's computers to look for jobs, visit a virtual library, get health information or send e-mail to lawmakers. The town, the state, local businesses and corporations help pay.
Community leaders are the key to such efforts because federal aid only pays for a few pilot projects, said Carol Fukunaga, a Hawaii state senator on the panel.
The report found that parents with technical knowledge often are a school's best resource. It encouraged schools to seek help anywhere: from corporations, state agencies and colleges, or even by switching money in their own budgets.
Connecting each public school to the Internet by 2000 would cost 1.5 percent to 2 percent of school budgets, or about $11 billion, the report estimated. That assumes putting about 25 computers per school into a special classroom where teachers can bring classes once a day.
Computers are more useful if they are integrated into lessons, researchers say. That setup, providing one computer for every five students by 2005, would require at least 4 percent of school budgets, or $47 billion.
About 1.3 percent of public school spending is now devoted to technology, the study found.
McCracken suggested schools scraping for money consider lower-cost used equipment for starters. ``Even fairly low-powered computers can be fairly good Internet access points,'' he said.
LENGTH: Medium: 67 linesby CNB