COOPERATIVE EFFORT BRINGS INTERACTIVE LEARNING NETWORK TO EAST CENTRAL COLORADO
State: Colorado
Grantee: East Central Board of Cooperative Educational Services
RUS Borrowers Serving the Project Area:

Plains Cooperative Telephone Association, Inc. (CO 518)
The Bijou Telephone Cooperative Association, (CO 527)
Strasburg Telephone Company, (CO 528)
Eastern Slope Rural Telephone Association, Inc., (CO 514)
Counties: Cheyenne, Kit Carson, Lincoln & Washington
Subject: Interactive Network, Distance Learning

Providing a quality education to students in east central Colorado that will prepare them for the challenges in the next millennium is not as simple as “ABC.” East central Colorado is a very rural region. With only one percent of the population of Colorado residing in 8 thousand square miles of semi-arid grassland prairie spread out through 7 counties, geographic isolation, insufficient funding, limited course offerings (especially advanced courses) and shortages of qualified teachers are some of the barriers the East Central Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES ) school districts are confronted with when planning their course curriculums. This is the only region in Colorado that is not directly serviced by an institution of higher education or post secondary vocational education.

BOCES was created in 1972 by ten school districts along the Interstate 70 corridor. At present, there are 16 member school districts located from Aurora (Denver Metro area) to the Kansas border and approximately 70 miles to the north and south from Woodrow to Karval. With this kind of extensive geographic coverage, BOCES concluded that one of the most effective ways to broaden the range of class offerings and avenues for continuing education opportunities was through distance learning.

In 1993, BOCES applied and was chosen to receive a Distance Learning and Telemedicine Grant Program for $291,301 to fund the Interactive Learning Network (ILN) project. The two way audio and video telecommunications network is expected to serve more than 4000 students, 430 teachers and administrators in 16 rural communities with educational programs not presently available due to the small number of students or the availability of instructional personnel. Secondary education curriculum will focus on advanced placement classes and foreign languages presently not available to students. Courses such as college algebra, math and biology will be offered as well as secondary education courses in western civilization, and applied physics. It is projected that school districts sharing existing teaching personnel will save as much as seven new course offerings to each school at a cost of less than the salary of a first year teacher.

RUS funding assistance in the past has assisted small and rural telephone companies in East Central Colorado to upgrade their infrastructure to fiber optic cable in the area serviced by the BOCES project. RUS funds will continue to assist rural communities to build the kind of telecommunications infrastructure they need as their on ramp to the Information Superhighway to accommodate the demand for new services such as two-way interactive instruction.