It's 5:00 P.M. on
a Monday evening, and Associate Professor Melanie Greene's Appalachian
State University (ASU) graduate class Connecting Learners and Subject
Matter is in full swing. Three different groups of students have just
given short presentations to their classmates, summarizing their thoughts
on the different curriculum philosophies they've been studying. "Thanks
for sharing that with us, Sandra," Greene says to Sandra Busic, a
teacher of gifted elementary and middle school students in Sparta, North
Carolina, who has just finished speaking. "Any questions?" Hearing
no response, Greene says, "Sandra, do you see any puzzled faces?"
The question may
seem odd, but there's a good reason for it: Greene is standing in a classroom
in Boone, North Carolina, while Busic is in Sparta, 50 miles and several
mountain ranges away. Even though Greene can see and hear all of her students,
live, and they can see and hear her, this is distance learning and Greene
wants to ensure that all her far-flung students are following along.
Welcome to the 21st
century, where the idea of a "classroom" in the traditional
sense has been thrown right out the window. With computers, high-speed
telephone lines, and video cameras, the walls, mountains, and miles vanish;
suddenly a small mountain town is as centrally located as Charlotte or
New York City.
At the Alleghany
Cyber Campus at Alleghany High School, one of seven "cyber campuses"
throughout the state of North Carolina linked via the North Carolina Information
Highway, high school students can take enhanced math, science, and language
courses and advanced college classes unavailable at their small high school,
teachers can get advanced degrees in the latest instructional technologies,
and virtually anyone in the area can bone up on the latest developments
in their field, all without leaving their own community.
Sandra Busic, who
wanted to pursue a master's degree in educational media, is a perfect
example. As the crow flies, it's a short hop from the little town of Sparta
to the ASU campus in Boone. But navigating the mountain roads between
the two can take a daunting hour and a half or more, especially in the
winter, with its twin hazards of icy roads and early nightfall. With a
full-time teaching job and two children, ages 10 and 12, at home, there's
no way Busic could make the twice-weekly drive to ASU.
"ASU is a long
way, and right now in my life it would be really tough to get there,"
says Busic. "But the cyber campus is five minutes from my house,
and it enables me to get a master's degree that fits perfectly with what
I do."
"It's a huge opportunity," agrees Busic's classmate Pamela
Braley, a teacher at Glade Creek Elementary School in Ennice. "It
enhances my professional credibility and my classroom—I take what
I learn in class here right back to my students—and I probably wouldn't
be getting my degree if it wasn't for this."
Reaching a Remote Area
The seven cyber campuses were the brainchild of the North Carolina School of
Science and Mathematics, which envisioned building an interactive campus in
each of North Carolina's most economically distressed counties. If there was
a logical location for a cyber campus, it was Alleghany County. Located in the
northwest corner of the state, it has no interstate highway access, a 20 percent
poverty level and an 8 percent unemployment rate (according to the most recent
Census figures), and the lowest high school completion rate in North Carolina.
But there was a catch. The technology for a cyber campus—such as computers
and video equipment—is expensive, and to secure a campus, a community had
to compete for it, demonstrating its commitment by kicking in substantial amounts
of money.
Sparta rose to the task under the leadership of Arthur Anderson Huber, a former
Atlanta banker who had retired to Alleghany County and was then director of
the local chamber of commerce. "I was helping the school system to raise
money for something totally unrelated when I heard about the cyber campus,"
says Huber, "and I told the school superintendent that if I were she, I'd
drop everything to win that competition. I thought it would set Alleghany County
in the center of things and begin to instill a measure of pride here. And even
more important, I thought it would create an infrastructure and provide career
opportunities for our young people above the typical six-dollar-an-hour wage."
Within months, the local hospital, banks, Lions Club, and industries together
raised $180,000 in matching grant funds, "which for this community is a
lot of money," says Sally Chitwood, general supervisor for Alleghany County
Schools.
George Matuck, a retired 30-year employee of IBM who manages the Alleghany
Cyber Campus, believes that initial deep and broad community participation was
key. "The cyber campus requires a fundamental change in the way people
think, and it takes a lot of effort to convince people that this works and they
can really use it," says Matuck. Too often, technology just shows up, he
says. "But those up-front partnerships meant that the community had a piece
of it from the beginning."
Governor Jim Hunt helped the local partners meet their goals by directing part
of North Carolina's allocation of Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) funds
to close the gap in the financing for the cyber campus. (The governor also directed
ARC funds to a cyber campus in Cherokee County.)
"Through the Alleghany Cyber Campus, the people of Alleghany County have
an opportunity to pursue a commitment to education that includes making sure
children start school ready to learn, getting and keeping good teachers, developing
safe and orderly schools, and setting high standards and helping students achieve
them," Governor Hunt says. "They already have shown they can come
together and secure the involvement and support of parents, businesses, and
the community to make their schools the best they can be. We want counties all
over North Carolina to follow their example so we can meet our goal of making
our public schools first in America by 2010."
With the help of the ARC funding, the Alleghany Cyber Campus opened in 1997.
To date, 4,400 students have received over 17,700 hours of instruction at the
Sparta facility. "Our students," says Sally Chitwood, "now have
opportunities that are as great as for any students anywhere."
Indeed, behind a nondescript door off a school hallway lies a whole new world:
a wired classroom where students can see and hear—and be seen and heard
by—a teacher at another location, in real time; a conference room-cum-second
classroom with the same interactive facilities; and a computer laboratory where
students and anyone from the community can use the cyber campus's powerful computers,
loaded with the latest in multimedia and graphics software and capable of creating
everything from banners and brochures to digitized video productions. All of
this is presided over by a professional staff and student interns. "It's
a facility that I never would have dreamed of," says Chitwood, and for
the first time it wipes away the educational disadvantages of being tucked high
on a lovely mountain.
A World of Opportunities
On a typical day at the Alleghany Cyber Campus, high school students take enhanced
math, science, and language classes, as well as accredited college courses from
Wilkes Community College in subjects that range from technology in society to
Eastern religions; struggling students have access to remedial pre-algebra and
English classes. College students take classes from Wilkes in accounting and
child development. And community members like Busic and Braley pursue master's
degrees from ASU.
Every Friday, the high school's students create and broadcast a half-hour news
show for the school. Other projects in development include an MBA program and
a five-year high school program, at the completion of which students would graduate
with both a high school diploma and a two-year associate's degree.
"It has been a tremendous boost to our program," says James Halsey,
principal of Alleghany High School. Assistant Principal Barbara Lyon agrees:
"We're a small system, and our students get some of the opportunities that
students in a larger system get every day," she says. "And it's all
right here, without leaving home; ultimately maybe some of our better students
won't have to leave the county for good education and jobs."
"I thought that if I could take some college courses, it might give me
an edge when I get to college next year," says Amber Widener, 17. A top
student in her senior year who has completed all the necessary high school credits,
Widener is taking a full load of 15 college credits through the cyber campus.
At the cyber campus, it sometimes seems that the whole mountain community is
suddenly dipping into new educational opportunities. Recent changes in North
Carolina law set up a system of ratings for day-care providers, and in order
for a center to receive the highest rating, a majority of caregivers must have
at least an associate's degree. In the past, meeting this standard might have
seemed impossible to people like Marlene Williams and Jennifer Billings, who
work full-time and wouldn't have the time to make the long trek from Sparta
to the closest community college. The cyber campus has made it possible for
them to take the classes they need (from Wilkes Community College) without leaving
Sparta.
"I couldn't take day classes and work, too," says Williams, "and
there's no way I could drive 45 minutes or an hour at night after work. Doing
it all on television," she adds, "is a little intimidating at first,
though. And there's a certain comfort level that just isn't the same as being
in a room with a real teacher."
Indeed, it's clear that the technology isn't perfect. There are momentary freezes
on the television, and it takes an extra effort on the part of the distant teacher
to reach out and engage the students. But it seems a small price to pay, and
most seem to be adapting well.
Cyber campus manager Matuck is enthusiastic about the opportunities online
education can provide to citizens in small towns like Sparta. "It could
have a significant impact. In places like Sparta people have traditionally lived
off the land or by elbow grease. But by allowing them this access to college,
people are going to do new things they've never done before."
Arthur Huber agrees: "From my vantage point, this is a big economic development
tool to go after small computer hardware and software companies. I had a very
smart young man working for me, and his aspiration was to be an automobile mechanic.
I begged him to take one class on the cyber campus. He did, and now he's totally
into computers; he's going to community college on the cyber campus, and if
he does well enough, he says he's going to go after a four-year degree at ASU.
There's a whole world out there, and now this whole town is fired up about learning."
Carl Hoffman is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C.
|