Distance Education Tops Fall Headlines!
Browning schools get grant for distance learning!
BROWNING — Schools here will split nearly $500,000 from a distance-learning grant
to ask questions and learn along with their far-away peers in real time.
The Rural Utilities Service Distance Learning and Telemedicine Grant Program provided
$498,746 for BrowningHigh School, K.W. Bergen School, Vina Chattin School, Napi
School, Browning Middle School and BabbElementary School.
"It's a grant to connect us with other schools, universities and Blackfeet Community
College so we will be able to do videoconferencing," said Ron Tucker, institutional
technology facilitator for the schools, in the Glacier Reporter. "For example, if we have a
lack of a class, say German, but Belgrade has it, then we can connect with them and sit
with their class virtually, and they see our students."
The grant also will pay for each building to receive a mobile unit containing a 42-inch,
high-tech television, Tucker said.
Froid students tour the Earth!
Froid Public School might be one of the smaller schools in Montana. But it sure
has a sense of modern technology!
Take Monday, May 11 as an example. On that day, students from Froid, Belt, and
Butte we the only Montanans involved in a nation-wide TV hookup with NASA.
Students from those three schools—along with students from several other states—were
able to talk with astronauts about a space shuttle launch held that day.
The launch program hookup was part of the VisionNet system based in Great
Falls.
But Froid School’s ties to on-site learning go well beyond VisionNet. Earlier this
year, the school district received an $88,000 Tandberg “Learning Beyond Borders” grant.
Those funds allow students and faculty to have live interaction via 42-inch TV with
instructors from just about anyplace in the United States—and beyond.
According to Froid Superintendent of Schools Roger Britton, “We had a live
program about the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. We invited the entire community to
set in on the hookup with Australia. We could talk to a diver about everything we saw on
the screen, from starfish to sharks. And the whole program, community included, cost us
$250 in grant funds.”
Added Britton, “It seems there’s no end to the possibilities where we can go—
from the Manhattan School of Music to Alaska to the Great Wall of China. All those
trips are live and they are all paid for by grant funds.”
He continued, “We just recently got it all together and working. A lot of credit
goes to Geoff Casey, our science teacher; Alex Ator, our math teacher; and Duane
Larsen, our art teacher. Mr. Larsen is planning a live tour through the Philadelphia
Museum of Art.”
Britton said, “We’re so loaded with technology this year it’s unreal. It’s giving
our kids opportunities to experience places they might never see otherwise and to learn
more about the world.”
Article from Sheridan County News May 14, 2009
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