Meeting the Internet Challenge By Laureen Ricks Realizing America's growth into a technological economy, the Clinton Administration issued a challenge to US schools: Every classroom would be connected to the Internet by 2000, and all students would be technologically literate. Programs at the national and state level were established to help meet these goals, and grants were given to states to help put computers in the classrooms.

Marion County is one of the communities in the state of Florida that readily accepted and began putting into effect the challenge. The county consists of 42 public K-12 schools. Within ten months, during the school year of 1999-2000, 1.3 million feet of cable was used in wiring each school.

"That was extremely fast for a project this big," said Dough Joiner, former applied technology director for Marion County. He feels the initiative to make the Internet more available to students is a good one.

"Resources on the web continue to astonish me. It is also important helping students learn how to find information on these resources and teaching them how to evaluate it," Joiner added. "Those are the type of skills employers want."

A minimum standard for each school in Marion County was set: Each classroom has at least four computer cables and one phone cable. Managed hubs and switched technology make the networks run easier. A server runs in each school.

"We started with schools with no network first and then went to the newer schools (that already had networks) and upgraded them," Joiner stated. The cost of cabling the school, especially the bigger and older ones, he went on to explain, was a big commitment in funds. Programs such as the Universal and Affordable Access to Advanced Telecommunications, signed into law by the Clinton Administration, provided much of the funding. A portion of the bill, known as E-wright, gives a discount to schools and libraries for cable and telephone services in the schools: The poorer the district (based on free and reduced lunch), the bigger the discount is.

America's Technology Literacy Challenge and the Regional Technology in Education Consortia program are among other federal programs established in efforts to help prepare young people for the technological age.

In his 1997 state of the union address President Clinton stressed that technological literacy was as essential as reading and writing and math. Yet he felt many of the nation's young people were not prepared for the technological era and many teachers had no technology experience in the classroom.

Earl Scales, Chairman of the Marion County Democratic club, also feels students are not being adequately prepared in the schools, technology wise. Commenting on the initiative, he acknowledged that "there is a lack of support to education at the state level," but felt that "the local school board and administration are doing everything it can with what it gets.”

While Marion County has begun to put into place the tools necessary for greater technology, the work isn't over. "Now that we have done cables and hubs in the schools, we are helping put in decent multimedia computers on the end of those cables," Joiner stated. And the county also plans more training for educators as resources become available.

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