1997 Grant Awards:
$127,598
Troy, North Carolina
Montgomery Community College is a member of the North Carolina Community College System, offering associate degrees in various disciplines. The students and teachers of Montgomery County Public Schools are located in the rural geographic center of the state and are isolated from their peers in the rest of the state and the world. They have been given a state initiative that requires them to meet certain state and national proficiency standards in regard to technical literacy in telecommunications without the funding and/or technology to do so. Montgomery Community College proposes to use the grant funds to create a LAN/WAN connecting four Montgomery County public schools sites to the current North Carolina Information Highway hub at Montgomery Community College. The proposed distance learning system will primarily be an educational system which will allow access to resources on Internet, the World Wide Web, and the North Carolina Information Highway.
$330,000
Shawboro, North Carolina
The Northeastern Regional Education Alliance (NREA) is a collaborative organization created by nine northeastern North Carolina school districts to bring distance learning and the Internet to rural students. The nine school districts are located in the counties of Camden, Chowan, Dare, Gates, Halifax, Hyde, Pasquotank, Perquimans, and Tyrell. Transporation is mainly limited to two-lane roads and scheduled ferries to the barrier islands such as Ocracoke Island. The proposed project will establish or enhance the ability of these school districts to connect to the North Carolina Information Highway (NCIH), a state-sponsored network offering interactive, two-way video-conferencing and high speed data links. Through the NCIH, students will have access to advanced courses which would otherwise be unavailable or cost-prohibitive for rural schools. The teachers and students will also gain access to the Internet. The local communities surrounding each school are also expected to benefit from the abailability of continuing education classes provided over the NCIH.