Sunday, February 13, 2000
Program brings Net to Appalachia
BY PAUL BARTON
Enquirer Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — Appalachia is all too used to seeing some of the main engines of economic development leave it behind.
Regional officials are trying to make sure it is not left behind by one of the most important of all: the Internet.
Throughout an area of intense poverty and poorly equipped schools, a number of initiatives are aiming to give the region's residents exposure to the Information Highway.
One is a project by the private organization ACEnet, the Appalachian Center for Economic Networks.
In Athens County, the group is attempting to bridge what President Clinton and other policy makers increasingly refer to as “the digital divide,” the gap between regions and population groups that have ready access to online information and those that do not.
Using grants from the federal government and private foundations, ACEnet sets up computer laboratories in schools and sends instructors to show teachers and students how to use them and how to become Internet-savvy.
The organization plans to expand its program to more and more Southern Ohio counties in the coming years.
“They soak it up like a sponge,” Heather Snedeker, one of the lab instructors said of what happens when communities are exposed to the Internet.
“It is easy for them to learn; their self-esteem grows and they want to learn more and more.”
The stakes are high.
“The technology gap is a real one in these rural communities,” said Mike Kiernan, spokesman for the Washington-based Appalachian Regional Commission, a federal agency that tries to boost regional development.
“For decades in Appalachia we had to deal with the economic consequences of being bypassed by the interstate highway system. We are determined to see that the information highway does not bypass Appalachia.”
The White House and Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Lucasville, have made similar pronouncements.
The president is planning to lead a group of computer-industry officials on a tour of some of the most economically disadvantaged areas of the nation this spring, including Appalachia, to get them interested in bridging the digital divide.
Mr. Strickland plans to meet with a group of computer-industry officials in Washington next week to make similar inquiries.
One place to start, Mr. Strickland said, is supporting the president's initiatives to help schools nationwide update buildings and facilities.
It's hard for many classrooms in Southern Ohio to house computers, he said, when there are only two or three electrical outlets in many of them.
The mountainous terrain itself can be a problem in installing high-speed phone lines for Internet traffic, Mr. Kiernan added.
“It's an enormous problem for rural communities,” he said.
In addition, phone companies are often uninterested in updating lines to small rural communities because they don't see such investments as profitable, said June Holley, president of ACEnet.
One ACEnet goal is to get more rural and small-town Appalachia residents interested in computers and the Internet so that phone companies will see enough demand to put in lines.
The computer labs the ACEnet opens in schools are made available to parents and local businessmen and women at night and on weekends so that they can get exposure as well. The computers are given to the schools to keep.
Ms. Holley calls these “fairly sim ple ways you can set a lot of things in motion,” adding, “There are ways you can get around the digital divide.”
The Appalachian Regional Commission has been working on the same problem.
Over the past three years, the commission has sponsored more than 100 projects in different Appalachian communities to help spread knowledge and applications of high technology in the region.
Typical of them was giving laptop computers to all students in the Towns County Middle School in Georgia, while offering training for students, teachers and parents.
The results have been encouraging. “Compared to 1997, school officials report that school attendance improved in 1998, disciplinary problems declined, and more parents of Towns County students enrolled in adult education courses. School officials, in fact, see the project enriching the lives of students, parents and teachers in unexpected ways,” a commission report on the project said.
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Program brings Net to Appalachia
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