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When the state shifted to e-learning, a rural school shifted to the copy machine
- HenryBemis 7y agoArticle points to twitter post: https://twitter.com/LDLOVEL/status/1239368178435833856 https://twitter.com/LDLOVEL/status/1239368178435833856
- dugmartin 7y agoI grew up in Southern Illinois near this school district and now live in Western Mass in a school district facing the same problem. We are the largest district geographically in the state and have lots of rural students with no access to the Internet. My wife is an elementary school reading specialist and can’t get in contact with many of her kids. The number one concern for the state Ed leaders is “equity” which for now, while the schools are physically closed, means no online education for anyone in our district.
- sethammons 7y agoWe are also very rural with many families with no internet. Instead of eLearning, we have printed packets available for pickup at the front office. For those with internet, the same packets are available online.
- dorchadas 7y agoSame. We had to hand out our first packet to students the last day we were in class (had less than 24 hours to make them, it's a minor miracle our notoriously broken copier didn't break), and then we had to put our next two weeks online, so that the principle could print out copies to have available while they're working at the school still.
- lioeters 7y agoI recently learned about School of the Air ¹, where classes were conducted by radio for children of rural areas in Australia. I wonder if something like that could be a temporary solution for rural America, until Internet infrastructure reaches those areas. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_the_Air https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_the_Air
- dorchadas 7y agoI teach in a district that has a good portion of kids without internet access (even on phones) and, as things stand, there's no 'until'. It'll never happen. The families are either too poor to afford internet costs, or they're so rural that no company will go lay line; it's just not profitable. This is exactly why the government needs to step in an declare Internet access a utility and make sure everyone can get access (not to mention it's basically the only way to apply for jobs anymore).
- coryrc 7y agoWe need to make it affordable to live in cities via better zoning, not continue to subsidize people living in the middle of nowhere.
- intopieces 7y agoRural living is a cultural choice, not a purely economic one. The "subsidies" you mention, I would bet, are far below those given to large corporations in this country who surely have the capital to expand to these "middle of nowhere" places.
- sfkdjf9j3j 7y agoThe biggest corporate subsidies go to agriculture, oil, and ethanol production, all of which disproportionately benefit people in rural areas already. And that's in addition to the direct cash grants of federal tax money that rural states depend on to fund their state budgets.
- dorchadas 7y agoI'm not sure if I agree with this, for multiple reasons; it also stinks of classicism and a superiority complex. Besides, even if you made living more affordable in urban areas, that doesn't mean people will necessarily move there. People are complex beings and aren't going to just pick up and move as much as economists, among others, tend to think for better job opportunities. There are other things that tie people to places For instance, one reason I live where I do is because my entire family is there, and being around them is something I consider important, especially with my aging grandmother after my grandfather's passing.
- RockIslandLine 7y agoThere is literally no excuse for this in 2020. Funding for rural telecom has been part of every budget for decades. Write a proposal and get it funded. https://www.rd.usda.gov/programs-services/all-programs/telecom-programs https://www.rd.usda.gov/programs-services/all-programs/telec...
- dorchadas 7y agoAnd then get sued into oblivion by frivolous lawsuit after frivolous lawsuit from the big names, who have the budget to wear yours out.
- gumby 7y agoThis article is an eye opening read. They didn’t choose paper because they were old fashioned but because their students all lived in an area without internet or any retail infrastructure. They also distributed corona virus info because the parents were (naturally) in the same boat. I might have expected such a thing deep in the Australian bush or in rural parts of west Africa but not close to major urbanization’s like Chicago or St Louis.
- sslayer 7y agoI am Jacks Bias.
- non-entity 7y ago> I might have expected such a thing deep in the Australian bush or in rural parts of west Africa but not close to major urbanization’s like Chicago or St Louis. tbf the lines between rural, suburban, and urban in the US can be easily blurred. I've lived in places that were relatively urbanized to middle of nowhere in half an hour of driving
- Spooky23 7y agoI lived in a town about 13 miles from Albany, NY as the crow flies. We had a party line until 1990, and our CO was so antiquated that dial-up would connect at between 9600-19200. Now my parents have a local company cable connection funded by Obama's broadband expansion. They were using Verizon, but Verizon basically no longer maintains copper unless there's a certain number of customers on a road.
- tomatotomato37 7y agoDoes bring up the question if it makes sense to practice convnetional social distancing for a place where everyone is already lives so physcially apart that it's a pain in the ass to provide them with modern infrastructure; you'd think the curve would already be flat enough for them that whatever urban hospital services the area could handle it. To put the density in perspective the entire population of 500 sq mi Coles County is 2k less than the population of all 2 sq mi of Uptown Chicago
- jessaustin 7y agoThe Daughters Bell have failed rural America. It's decades past time when FCC should stop holding back progress in these areas by doing the bidding of ATT/VZN. We are not served by spectrum monopoly regulatory regimes.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoThe government and ultimately the voters who vote them in failed rural America. Fiber internet should be a utility. I still see voters opposing municipal fiber internet, for the sole reason that they are “anti government”.
- lonelappde 7y agoHow much would it cost to run fiber to the rural home? 4G cellular seems more efficient and good enough if websites wouldn't be so wasteful.
- pgrote 7y agoThe USA did this for electricity. It is mind boggling it hasn't been done for internet access. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act
- burlesona 7y agoThe REA also basically killed the low-energy appliance and home electric generation industries (which were growing in the 1920s), and greatly accelerated suburban sprawl, all of which dramatically contribute to carbon emissions. There are always unintended consequences to the blunt instrument of massive programs. As an alternative, if the government reduced the monopoly power of the telcos and allowed things like municipal internet, that might be a good solution. I think we should seek first to remove the barriers and obstacles to progress before we use scorched earth to accomplish a goal.
- jstewartmobile 7y agoThe daughters bell have unintentionally saved us from some of the coastie live-in-the-pod, eat-the-bugs, take-the-tranny-hormones psychological warfare that they wage upon us. Silver linings are everywhere. Long live the copy machine!
- madengr 7y agoCopy machines were too expensive to use for school work. I remember some machine that used a hand powered roller to spit out copies in a pale, blue ink. This was late 70’s/80’s.
- root 7y agoA stencil machine. We used it to print the school newspaper. Just by writing this I can smell it.
- jfk13 7y agoAh, the memories! I did a spell of that, too, when a few of us launched a (short-lived) school magazine. We had two options to create the stencil: there was a special machine that used some kind of electrical process (I don't remember details) to scan a printed sheet and "burn" a stencil from it, so you could copy arbitrary originals; or you could cut the stencil directly on a typewriter (with no ribbon), which gave a sharper result -- but you really didn't want to make too many typing errors, there's only so much you can do with stencil correcting fluid.
- Spooky23 7y agoMimeograph.
- Mountain_Skies 7y agoYep. I was impressed when our school bought its first electric mimeograph. Until then, they were hand cranked. If you were one of the well behaved students and arrived early enough, a teacher sometimes would let you go with her to the office to crank the machine to produce that day's worksheets.
- vidanay 7y agoI can smell this comment.
- buckminster 7y agoThey were widely used in offices too. Roneo and Gestetner were two common brands in the UK.
- Glyptodon 7y agoEven in urban districts getting all students online is a huge undertaking. Watched part of a school board meeting a couple days ago and the local district was planning on buying 10k-ish Chromebooks and getting 3 months of internet service donated by the cable company to cover the portion of families without computers+internet at home. My grandmother lives in a rural area and it's economically collapsed (30% poverty rate), with no realistic way to get everyone internet access, so doing something more old fashioned will probably be necessary. What I think is sad is that stopping school for two months as a replacement for summer break and then finishing the school year and immediately starting the next without a break should be the simplest thing to do. But nobody can do it for a bunch of reasons that are more pathetic than compelling.
- em-bee 7y agowhat reasons are those?
- Glyptodon 7y agoThings like parents already having summer plans (Disneyland, travel, etc.), or a few teachers not wanting to agree to it.
- sneak 7y agoThere is an interesting issue to me with the idea that access to public education becoming gated upon whether or not you agree to a legal contract with a third party (Google’s TOS). What if you don’t want to waive your civil rights in agreeing to the Google TOS and associated surveillance? You simply don’t get the tax-funded education to which you are entitled? This is also an issue with universities switching to Zoom. Entering into an abusive, rights-waiving contract with a third party to be permitted to graduate is a terrible state of affairs. It worries me that “just click AGREE without reading it like everybody else did” is becoming the widespread, state-demanded default throughout society.
- tssva 7y agoOne good reason not to stop schools for two months as a replacement for summer break is that currently it is very uncertain that circumstances in the summer or at the beginning of the next school year will be anymore conducive to kids being in schools than they are now. Seems it would be much better to develop, trial and refine based upon real world experience remote teaching practices during the remainder of the school year and be in a much better position for the following school year if we are still dealing with this virus. Especially given that many experts seem to think there will be waves of easing and reimposing of restrictions until a vaccine is found.
- karatestomp 7y agoThe teacher my 1st grader has 4 days a week printed and organized packets ahead of time, and is using the digital tools to provide instructions on what to do with the paper. The one-day-a-week teacher is all digital. The tech-support pain, missing shit, links to the wrong things, and so on this first week have been 4:1 the other way. Paper doesn’t get janky or not work or change out from under you.
- BookFusionHQ 7y agoThis is the same situation in the Caribbean and other areas that BookFusion was also built to address. We allow schools and districts to launch their digital initiatives by allowing them to launch their private digital library and give options to distribute and give access to content for students and teachers both offline and online. Students would be able to read and complete activities while offline which is later synced backed to the platform when internet connectivity returns. https://www.bookfusion.com/education https://www.bookfusion.com/education Please send us an email at education@bookfusion.com if you know a school in a similar situation that could benefit from complimentary access to a platform like ours.