[1090] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: New Issues (was: Flaming at Abernathy now: k-12)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (martyne@theory.TC.CORNELL.EDU)
Thu Jul 25 10:00:20 1991
To: Steve Cisler <sac@apple.com>
Cc: HABEGGER_J@bronze.colorado.edu, com-priv@psi.com, willis@cs.tamu.edu,
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 24 Jul 91 10:25:41 PDT."
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 91 09:58:42 -0400
From: martyne@theory.TC.CORNELL.EDU
As I've done various presentation to k-12 and corporate folk, one of the things i learned
early on was not to try to convince them of the "goodness" of the Internet by
telling them what they could connect (i.e. telnet or ftp)... a better strategy to use
is to talk about is how the ability to connect to various services, having communication
capabilities, etc will impact the work that they have to do...
for example, simply for a high-school to have a connection to the Internet may sound good,
but no body is going to pay for it or use it if there isn't a reason... students of course
will try anything, however the schools to whom I've spoken are certainly NOT interested in
providing a connection to the world to students without supervision!! (good thing too!!)
so, as you "sell" the idea of a connection, the "selling" points may be that a high-school
will have the ability to develop a closer relationship with nearby universities - perhaps in
the sciences, perhaps in access data for some kind of research project, maybe just
getting cycles available for class projects - they will be able to connect to
the national supercomputer centers who offer cycles and training to schools who wish to
add computational science curriculum - there are many, many examples of how the
communication capabilities have been used in class projects from geography to current
affairs... for the teachers, the communication capabilities wil help them keep current
(possibly), create collegial relationships with other h.s. teachers as well as with
university faculty, possibly their state board of ed... the possibilities are endless
During a discussion group i ran at a k-12 meeting I attended earlier this spring (had about 120
attendees from a reasonably small geog area), one of the two main themes in the discussion
was "vocabulary"... there were a lot of folks there who know about fidonet, some of the
'pclans', knew the name of nysernet but weren't sure what it really was, had heard about
bitnet, nren, internet, arpanet but really weren't sure whay they were or how they were
related... My point is that the librarians, teachers, etc come to presentations about the
internet with a different vocabulary, different frame of reference and really want to
know why and how the internet (or whatever is being discussed) differs or is better for
their purposes from all these other things they might know about. one thing I've learned
is that my internal definition of "network" (as someone who works at a major research univ
and with the national networks for the last 6 years) is considerably different to the definition
of network to a high school teacher.. as are the definition for
"mailing list/listserv", "bulletin board", "connect (i.e. which to me means via the
network and to them may mean using a modem and phone line) "...
the second major theme of the discussion was money - how much does it cost?? this is a major
concern that must be recognized - i've been to schools where the "computer budget" was
$300 for the entire year, including buying paper and ribbons for printers... where the
ONLY phone line for external (not even long distance) calls is in the principals office!!
With corporations, the bottom line is the bottom line - will it help them make more money!!
the actual "how" of the connection (i.e. you need a cisco router etc) is only a detail!!
The last point I want to make it that the audience that you are talking about, the
librarians, teachers, small business folk, etc are looking at the Internet as a
commodity, rather than a research tool.... in other words, they want to be able to
"buy it off the shelf", and they have the expectation to have the services available to
support it, for example, directory services, a user interface a bit more sophisticated
than telnet... lets face it - the Internet, in terms of "ease of use" is not friendly place
for a novice with no technical background... Setting expectations is a VERY important
issue when these folks get connected... a couple of weeks ago, I did a short intro to
the Internet for about 15 high school teachers/principals and as part of it, did
a hands on session to let them connect to services on the net... telneting to library
catalogs and online info systems worked reasonably well but when we hit ftp and had
to deal with unix directories - it blew them away - they had never seen unix before and
from their comments, had neither the interest nor inclination to learn as the info
we were getting to did not have enough significance to them to encourage them learn.
Martyne Hallgren
Cornell University
