[10790] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Summary of Ferdi Serim feature from March COOK Report
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Gordon Cook)
Wed Mar 9 17:16:47 1994
From: cook@path.net (Gordon Cook)
Date: Wed, 9 Mar 1994 15:57:37 GMT
To: com-priv@psi.com
Here is the remaining information on the lead story for the March COOK
Report.....embargoed until this morning. Why? because Ferdi Serims
appointment to the Princeton Regional Schools system is now official. Takes
effect July 1, 1994. A major focus of our article is on what Ferdi hopes to
accomplish there....where every school is on the internet via the local cable
tv system at backbone speeds of 3 to 5 megabits per second.
F. SERIM'S VISION OF REFORM PP.1 - 10, 17, & 19.
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.)
Ferdi tells us how he became a music teacher, an arts administrator, and
established a personal-professional relationship with jazz great Dizzy
Gillespie. Also, how almost by chance he traded his musical instuments for
computers and telecommunications - while he learning to "play" them with great
accomplishment. Part of his insight - that students should be producers as
well as consumers of their education. His story shows how talent can be
nurtured in an environment that encourages independence amount teachers and
rewards risk taking.
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.
Of course the irony of all this is that he is moving from a very well to do
school district into one that is even better off. Ferdi is fully aware of
problems of information rich and information poor. He has promised to provide
us with some ideas on how this may be addressed in our April issue. In that
issue we will also publish detailed information on the Princeton Regional
Schools use of of cable tv to deliver the internet and the development of the
community out reach homework centers.
As Ferdi points out it may be time to bury the image of the information
superhighway in favor of the grassroots, indigenous, community-developed and
controled model that he has outlined.
___________________________________________________________________
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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