THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, July 18, 1996 TAG: 9607160126
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: John-Henry Doucette, Correspondent
LENGTH: 120 lines
BILL PICKENS has been many things, but at heart he is an unabashed crusader for educational reform.
Pickens wants all who will listen to know that we can bring technology into our schools.
He has seen it happen at Ruffner Middle School in Norfolk, the state-of-the-art school where he teaches.
``Our way of communication will be over the computer,'' said Pickens, who at 55 possesses a voice as unwavering as he is tall.
``The future of education is here,'' he continued, motioning to Ruffner's Internet lab, part of a donation from private industry that has opened a world of information to the students at the school on Tidewater Drive. Pickens helped open that door.
He said, ``We can't run away because of cost.''
To hear him speak about learning, it would seem hard to believe that he abandoned his Rochester, N.Y., high school in 11th grade and joined the Marine Corps.
``The first thing they taught me in the Corps was that you can't survive without an education,'' Pickens says. ``They helped me get my diploma.''
The service allowed him an early discharge, but not before he found a spot on the All Marine basketball team. When the Corps discharged him, he was recruited by more than 100 colleges.
He picked Georgia Southern.
He was 6-foot-10 and weighed 240 pounds, but he could move. He ran the 50-yard dash in 4.8 seconds. In addition to playing a mean point guard on the hardcourt, he knew his way around the football field.
The pros came knocking. First, the NFL's Kansas City Chiefs wanted him for a tryout. Then he was drafted by the NBA's Detroit Pistons.
After seeing him play, the Chiefs recommended he stick to hoops.
``When everybody told me I wouldn't last on the football field, I went out to prove them wrong,'' Pickens said. He did, but he lasted only two years and headed back to basketball with the Atlanta Hawks.
The team shuffled him off to Italy to get him ready to play pro.
``I fell in love with Italy,'' said Pickens, who persuaded the Hawks to release him. He would have played the rest of his career in Rome, but the Boston Celtics bought his playing rights, and he returned to the United States.
Briefly.
The Celtics released him.
Pickens headed back to Italy.
He spent the next seven years there, working as an industrial consultant, making sales video productions and even working with legendary ``spaghetti'' western director Sergio Leone on a film that was never completed.
The film business took him to South America. The film project fizzled, but he stayed in South America for a decade.
He returned to the United States in 1987 to care for family members.
With him came wife, Elsie, whom Pickens describes as ``a nice young girl from Colombia.''
They settled in Elizabeth City, N.C., in a very rural area. ``My wife's family said we moved from the Third World to the Fourth World,'' Pickens said.
But there Pickens discovered technology when he began writing children's books that taught language and other cultures for elementary-age American students.
He taught himself computers. It was a struggle at first, he recalls with a laugh: ``I earned two doctorates from the University of High Tech and Hard Knocks. Those are honorary doctorates.''
Pickens moved to Chesapeake three years ago when he began teaching a program for gifted and talented children at Frank W. Cox High School in Virginia Beach, where he says he ``was blessed to have Dr. Perry Pope as principal and Pamela Hoffler-Riddick as assistant principal.''
When Hoffler-Riddick left Cox to head Ruffner, she brought Pickens to develop the school's television station and media center.
But technology - real technology - was not initially in the budget.
Opportunity was.
Norfolk planned to host a conference where 400 computer terminals would be online at the same place at the same time. Ruffner could accommodate the terminals and the conference. But the terminals did not exist.
Cox Cable donated the computers: 400 Windows '95-based models, all with 16 megabytes of memory, CD-ROM capabilities and the potential to be online. InfiNet, an online service, gave the school a year of free use for all their terminals. Approximately 30 companies were involved in planning the conference and many of them helped with technical and installation issues.
Ruffner got to keep the gear.
``We asked,'' explained Pickens. ``Private industry is more than willing to help education when you ask. . . . Business needs civic involvement.''
And all it takes is asking?
``Yes,'' said Pickens. ``Not begging. Asking.''
Bill Pickens and Ruffner asked and received $1.3 million in computers.
The school plans to include terminals in every classroom next school year, where teachers can use the internet in their lessons, calling up a world of information.
Students have the equipment to research and to learn on their own.
According to Hoffler-Riddick, a plan is in the works at Ruffner that would eventually provide lap-top computers for students to take home with them.
Pickens will not be there to see it blossom.
Having helped the school get online, he will return to writing children's books next year. He said he will stay on as a consultant for the school system, and he will voice his concerns.
``Education should be more visionary,'' said Pickens. ``We have to think, `How are we going to communicate in the future? What will we use then?' not `What do we need to get by now.' ''
The time to put technology in the schools is now, he said. Pickens voices this with the dogged determination he brought to the sports field, because he believes change in schools isn't keeping up with the world students will eventually have to sink or swim in.
``There are too many people bunting,'' he said. ``We need more Babe Ruths in the league.''
But there is some resistance to splurging on computers. Technology costs money.
And Cox Communications' logo hovers in the school's hallway, mingling with Ruffner's green and yellow spirit colors. A giant computer clearly marked with the Cox name is a prominent part of the news set.
In Pickens' mind, there is no mid-ground on pursuing technology, even if it involves brand name donations to further education. He said it's either pay now or pay more later.
Said Pickens: ``We have to change the ways we fund education. It's not just Bill Pickens' reality. It's the reality of life.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by STEVE EARLEY
``The future of education is here,'' said Bill Pickens, seated in
Ruffner Middle School's internet lab, which opened a world of
information to students. by CNB