[11620] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
COOK Report Special Report on K-12 Network Innovation published
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Gordon Cook)
Mon Apr 11 20:47:29 1994
From: cook@path.net (Gordon Cook)
Date: Mon, 11 Apr 1994 18:32:26 GMT
To: com-priv@psi.com
The COOK Report announces the publication of a 20 page (20,000 word) Special
Report on K-12 Innovation in approaches to the Internet. It contains the
material on Ferdi Serim published in our March newsletter and and new material
including two new never published essays by Ferdi - one a look back from an
immaginary future at where this technology could take us in the next 15 years,
the other a realistic look at how to reach out from a well to do district such
as Princeton to links and partnerships with inner city schools. Ferdi announces
some specific programs to be undertaken with the Princeton based Bonner
Foundation.
Ferdi says: "Right before my appointment to Princeton became official, I met
with Wayne Meizel, who directs the Bonner Foundation in Princeton. This
organization has a most unusual purpose, which is to provide scholarships to
1450 students at participating universities across the nation. These "Bonner
Scholars" get $3270 per year in college scholarship assistance in return for 540
hours per year of community service. Interestingly, most of these students end
up as teachers! We are designing a project where some of these fine young
people can receive training sufficient to allow them to got into their local
schools and provide the technical support necessary to get these classrooms onto
the internet. Teacher training will be by osmosis, with latitude for those
cooperating teachers who embrace the opportunity as well as those who merely
tolerate it. Either way, kids will have the benefit."
The other new material is a long interview with Peter Thompson the District
Technical Coordinator for the Princeton schools. We learn technical details of
Princeton's Cable TV infrastructure and how, through Princeton University,
Princeton's institutional cable network was linked to the Internet in such a way
as to give 80 to 100 kbs through put to every student computer in every school.
The administration and operation of the system is discussed in some detail.
Finally we discuss the Homework Centers that either are or will be linked to the
network. We look at them from both a philosophical and technical point of view.
The report is available on an invoice basis at a cost of $150 to corporations
and non profits. It is available for $45 to individual teachers and to school
districts. The $45 rate applies only to checks mailed with your order.
Here is a screen from our earlier announcement covering the material published
in our March 94 newsletter. The new material will appear as 9 pages of our May
newsletter.
F. SERIM'S VISION OF REFORM
We interview Ferdi Serim who as a 4th through 6th grade computer instructor at
the West Windsor Plainsboro New Jersey Upper Elenentary School has his students
"serfing" the internet with an aplomb seen only in relatively few high school
programs in the nation. (Length about 12,000 words.)
Our report is also the first announcement of his impending move from the West
Windsor Plainsboro Schools to the Princeton Regional Schools. There he will
begin to carry out an ambitious five year program that will use the Internet to
transform the role of local education.
His vision contains five parts: first continued teaching; second, teaching
other teachers how to integrate the net into what they are doing; third, network
curriculum development; fourth, intergrating the network and school system with
the citizens of Princeton via four community-based network-attached after school
and weekend homework centers; fifth, out reach via grants application and use of
the school system's teachers to train local businesses in use of the network.
___________________________________________________________________
Gordon Cook, Editor Publisher: COOK Report on Internet -> NREN
431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618
cook@path.net (609) 882-2572
Subcriptions: $500 corporate site license; $175 educational & non prof., $85
individ.
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