In a remote area of New Mexico, Central Consolidated Schools is struggling to get a workable connection to the Internet for all its schools. delete The 7,500-student district with 17 schools straddles a Navajo reservation. The district鈥檚 five schools that are not on the American Indian reservation, plus one that is, have a fast and robust connection to the Internet. But 11 of the schools on the reservation have a lousy connection, so slow that it can take half an hour to download a few e-mail messages.
鈥淣ot only is there a digital divide, but we live on it,鈥� says Rick Nussbaum, the director of technology-support services for the district.
The reason, he points out, is that the district hasn鈥檛 been able to get the telecommunications company serving the area to install the line that would permit the schools on the reservation to share the fast connection to the Internet鈥攁 T1 line鈥攖hat the schools off the reservation are using.
鈥淲e have the hardware, the servers, the routers,鈥� says Nussbaum. 鈥淲e have the connections between schools. The only problem we鈥檙e having is getting connected to the Internet.鈥�
The 鈥楲ast Mile鈥� Problem
Rural and other isolated areas hoping to link up with advanced telecommunications often encounter what technology experts call the 鈥渓ast mile鈥� problem.
It鈥檚 costly for companies to lay fiber-optic cable or provide another kind of technology infrastructure in remote areas both because of the distances involved and because local communities often lack the customer base that suburban or urban areas have that enable providers to recoup their costs.
鈥淭he issue becomes the level of access鈥攈ow big your pipe is coming into your school,鈥� says Steven A. Sanchez, the director of curriculum, instruction and learning technologies for the New Mexico Department of Education. 鈥淚t鈥檚 those isolated communities in the mountain areas and out on the reservations that have had the most difficulty鈥� with access.
Education technology experts generally talk as if all students are entitled to 鈥渂roadband鈥� access to the Internet, which is generally viewed as a connection able to transmit large amounts of video and data in two directions. The goal of most educators is to obtain at least the quality of a T1 line for rural schools, even though some suburban or urban schools now have even higher-quality connections.
Almost all of the nation鈥檚 schools have, at the least, what鈥檚 called a 鈥� dial-up鈥� connection to the Internet, which allows students or teachers to place a call to the Internet service provider in the same way they would place a regular telephone call.
With the help of state initiatives that take advantage of bulk buying power to convince companies it鈥檚 worth their while to provide an infrastructure for service to far-flung areas, and with the help of satellite and other technologies, many rural areas are overcoming access problems.
Kentucky, for example, has a statewide initiative that guarantees broadband access to every county in the state, and many schools have been successful in getting high-quality connections, according to Marty Newell, a part-time field-staff person for the Rural School and Community Trust, a Washington-based nonprofit organization.
In addition, while many of the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs鈥� 185 schools have had only slow dial-up connections to the Internet, the government expected, as of April, to have every bia school connected to the Internet with at least a T1-quality line. The project used satellite technology in areas where it wasn鈥檛 feasible to lay fiber-optic cable that would provide a T1 line or fractional T1 line, which would provide a school with only a fraction of the 24 channels available with a full T1 line.
鈥淚f we had known how difficult it was, we never would have started,鈥� says Peter H. Camp, an education specialist for the bia and a member of the team that coordinated the effort, which took three years. 鈥淚t has been an enormous challenge.鈥�
Home Connections Scarce
But some rural schools are still waiting to get T1-quality lines.
Those schools may not have gotten around to applying for federal E-rate money, which subsidizes such connections, benefiting many rural schools.
Or the schools with poor access may not yet have experienced the fruits of state initiatives that are kicking in right now. The North Dakota legislature, for example, has approved plans for a network that ensures that all districts with a high school will have T1 connections by the end of this summer.
One reason to target rural schools for high-quality connections to the Internet is that in many rural communities, few students have computers and Internet connections at home.
鈥淚鈥檓 working in a lot of places where more than a third of the homes don鈥檛 have telephones,鈥� notes Newell of the Rural School and Community Trust, who has worked with nearly two dozen rural schools in Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia over the past year. 鈥淲e鈥檙e a long way from having computers in those homes.鈥�
Debra L. Flynn, the sole teacher at Molt Elementary School in Molt, Mont., says that only one of the nine students in her school has a computer at home and the school鈥檚 Internet connection is often used by members of the community.
A dial-up connection to the Internet has been workable for her students, given the small size of the school. Still, Flynn has appreciated upgrades to the connection.
A year ago, the school used E-rate aid to pay for a second telephone line, which is now dedicated to Internet access. The second line makes computer troubleshooting much easier, says Flynn, because she can stay on the phone with a repair person at the same time she鈥檚 logged on to the Internet.
While at a tiny school such as Molt Elementary, students may not be losing out in big ways by not having a state-of-the-art connection to the Internet, at schools with more students鈥攁nd thus more traffic鈥攈aving a poor connection rules out certain educational activities.
Information Flows in Digital Drips
Stephen Carr, a technology teacher at Newcomb Middle School, one of the schools within New Mexico鈥檚 Central Consolidated district, says the quality of the connection to the Internet at his 250-student school on the Navajo reservation is like 鈥渁 small water pipe.鈥� He says: 鈥淲e鈥檙e getting drips, while everyone else is getting a flow.鈥�
Newcomb and nine other schools on the reservation share one 56K dedicated line to the Internet.
Besides the fact that students have to wait while Web pages load 鈥� painfully鈥� slowly, Carr says, the quality of the connection doesn鈥檛 allow them to participate in online courses, which can be an important source of instruction for rural students.
鈥淲e have [high school] students who leave here at about 7:30 in the morning to go to San Juan College in Farmington, 75 miles away. They鈥檙e able to take one class in the morning and come back to the school to take classes in the afternoon,鈥� Carr says. 鈥淚f we had Internet access and a higher bandwidth and satellite communication, we could set up two-way communication for a class.鈥�
