ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, October 3, 1996 TAG: 9610030033
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: DUBLIN
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
There's a new computer motto in Pulaski County: If you can see it, you can link up with it.
Jim Sandidge, the school system's information technology manager, admits having been skeptical about linking computers at all county schools and administrative offices without costly telephone lines. But he's becoming a believer.
Pulaski County High School - which is already connected by phone line to advanced computer programs at the nearby Southwest Virginia Governor's School - is now tied in to Critzer Elementary School using a system of what looks like little TV satellite dishes.
"It's all running," Sandidge said. "All I did was plug it up."
That wasn't quite all. He had to assemble the broadcast dish on a school roof. "The Governor's School network and high school network is running at Critzer Elementary School right now in real time," he said.
Sandidge reported the progress to the Governor's School board Tuesday, mapping out how computer signals will zap from school rooftops to five mountain-top antenna dishes and back to other schools.
"For a long time, I thought the mountain was the problem," he said. "The mountain's the solution." Signals can be bounced from dishes on the mountain to every school in the county except Riverlawn Elementary, which will require a tower for line-of-sight transmission.
Every night for the past three years, Sandidge has tried to download data from schools in the county through traditional telephone lines. "I've got an awful lot of student information I want to move every day."
Sometimes it would work, and sometimes the weather or some other factor would mess up transmission. Even when it worked, it could take three hours. "I just did it in 31/2 minutes," he said of the new system.
Quick and dependable transmission would be no problem with special high-speed lines, but those are expensive. "We're small, rural school systems. We can't afford dedicated phone lines," Sandidge said.
But the same wireless technology planned for Pulaski County could also shoot signals from the Governor's School to school systems in other counties served by the school, he said.
"It's very easy to install. The hardest part is putting the antenna together," said Jon Steinman, territory sales manager for Solectek Corp., the Maryland company that engineered the connection. "The line-of-sight is the single most important thing."
The Governor's School now connects to schools in Pulaski and Giles counties and one school in Wythe County using National Aeronautics and Space Administration technology to send over regular telephone lines at a faster speed.
"We were years away from doing what we want to do until this came along. It has so many implications," said Pulaski County Superintendent Bill Asbury.
LENGTH: Medium: 57 linesby CNB