HI Folks,
Just this past week, I realized that the seasonal spirit would not be completely expressed until I mounted my ladder and stretched strings of lights as far as I could reach across the blue spruce which has grown on my front lawn since 1980. Of course the available time I had to do this happened only after it had just stopped raining (but not stopped misting), but what the heck, I had an aluminum ladder and fiberglass chimney rods to help ascend the 30 feet this tree had grown in the past two seven year cycles. I'd almost completed the job when a short darkened the tree and my spirits. When I awoke, I had a realization about connecting schools to the Internet.
The Tree Light Metaphor
As we connect our classrooms to the Internet, and the light from many sources illumines our teaching, we tend to want to offer to others the riches we've found. In many cases, this amounts to replicating the phone line access we've personally relied upon to bring these resources to our students. If it's SLIP access, we've also brought gopher, and maybe even WWW (mosaic, netscape) constructions to our educational environs. All it took for us was that first line and some gumption, so why not extend this model to all?
While I was up that ladder, I noticed that some strings of light connected to one another, end to end, while other strings needed to go back to the source in order to be lit. This was slightly problematical, but could be worked around, given enough extension cords. Everything just had to come together into a single line into my house. Then I got zapped.
It became clear that what we're trying to do (in connecting classrooms via modem) is inherently unreachable. If each light represents a classroom, it's essential to make sure that every light stays lit. By stressing phone lines to each classroom, it is as if I'd attempted to run an extension cord to every *bulb* on my tree. Even if I *could* do this, I'd face an incredible electrician's bill when I asked to have a couple hundred outlets installed in my house to allow these bulbs' cords to be plugged in. Because for *every* classroom to come online at once, they *all* need a place to plug in. Nobody is ready for the volume of connections we educators represent as a community.
The model we're reaching for must allow for such simultaneous connectivity, and the 85,000 school districts with many multiples of classrooms simply won't arrive at the destination if they have to get there by modems (which require a "plug" on each end). Clearly another model is required.
We may not desire to become conversant in the arcane mechanics of networking, but since we are the people "closest to the scene" it's on *us* to let those who make strategic decisions know what we know: that the Local Information Infrastructure is as important (if not more important) than the "information superhighway" that dominates the media. If we don't we'll be like that Vermont farmer who admonishes the vacationing tourist seeking directions "well, sir, you can't get theyah from heyah".
Our efforts to connect classrooms may very well *begin* with a single phone line, perhaps feeding an entire school. Nonetheless, the evolution follows a sequence of succession not unlike "weeds to trees", and challenges us to network our classrooms, buildings and districts to form "local" versions of the "virtual communities" we aspire to on the Internet. If we do so, when global connectivity comes along at affordable terms (the value having long since been proven by those "points of light" established by early adopters) we will be *able* to light the entire tree, and know what to do with the resulting potential.
Glowing in your reflected light,
Ferdi
Ferdi Serim
Princeton Regional Schools
Computer Teacher/ District Computer Coordinator
ferdi_serim@monet.prs.k12.nj.us (school) phone: 609 683-4699
ferdi@cosn.org (Consortium for School Networking)
"The unlived live is not worth examining."