Editor's Note: Frank Odasz is the founder and Director of the Big Sky Telegraph, an electronic service that provides a wide variety of educational resources to rural communities in Montana. The Big Sky Telegraph is based at Western Montana College, otherwise known as WMC (I think they had it first). Computer networks have tremendous, mostly-unrealized potential to aid communications and learning. Frank explains this potential, both generally and in terms of education. People interested in rural development should take note of these ideas. If you're not interested in PC telecommunications, please give this a read anyhow; might change your mind.
The shift from the industrial age to the information age threatens to be very costly in human terms. To succeed with this global transformation without dire transitional consequences, is a monumental task. At the time in human history when unprecedented cooperation is needed, we actually have the technology for mass participation. For the first time in human history, nearly everyone actually can participate, regardless of age, sex, race, religion, location, time available, and handicap.
The increased rate of change in today's world, marked by the fragmentation of the family and communities, threatens each of us. Personal computer telecommunications has the potential to defend each of us from being without the information necessary to succeed individually, and to collectively protect our cherished lifestyles and cultures. Community networking is an idea whose time has come.
During the 1980s, 50% of the Rocky Mountain ranchers and farmers lost their ranches and farms, in an age where a modem- generated second income might have saved their families' homesteads. Not knowing what options exist, being an information "have-not," threatens to create a class of electronically colonized info-poor techno-peasants.
Rural Americans need the broadest possible teleliteracy to know their available options. The technology is already here! Low- cost notebook Age" states flatly, "The decline in rural America will continue...until rural Americans learn to use telecommunications technology to be competitive with urban centers."
Montanans have already established a working model of telecommunications "appropriate technology" transfer for empowering grassroots efforts, that fits the American character and way of doing things, through Western Montana College's Big Sky Telegraph project in Dillon, Montana. High speed personal computer telecommunications and classic American individualism have brought exciting new low-cost options for individual involvement on the global economic and educational frontiers.
Our top-down government and corporate institutions need awareness of the successful telecommunications-mediated funding models that have empowered the ingenuity of rural individuals to generate the variety of bottom-up initiatives and innovations as evidenced on Big Sky Telegraph, and other civic/educational networks.
Bottom-up online microcomputer networks, with global capabilities, are now defining how telecommunications technology best fits the needs of individuals and communities. Despite billions of dollars invested in telecommunications infrastructures, few dollars are spent teaching citizens their available options for purposeful use of telecommunications. Nowhere is there a more glaring omission than with microcomputer telecommunications.
Inexpensive modem communications, using existing personal computers, with access to a free local school-based community bulletin board system, can dramatically raise the teleliteracy of an entire community. A local bulletin board system with global Internet email exchange capabilities can prepare a community for the day when ISDN, direct Internet protocol nodes, and/or multimedia fiber optic systems become available. There is a very real need to prepare our community cultures for the upcoming information technologies.
Third graders in Hobson, Montana, (population 200,) learn keyboarding by typing network messages to new friends in Japan and Australia. Hobson's High Schoolers discuss global entrepreneurship with their peers in Kamchatka, formerly part of the USSR. A sister community project with the Guangxi Province in China is under discussion, via email. The Hobson school spends under $50/month for ALL global telecommunications costs.
There appears to be emerging within the educational technology reform movement an unmistakeable trend toward community outreach, lifelong learning, and integration of the school and community through the convenience of modem communications. There is a growing emphasis on teaching using real world problems, and on showcasing the community-wide relevance of ongoing K-100 science/math learning, particularly as it relates to competitiveness in the emerging global economy.
The challenge is no less than the teaching of a new info-based sociology...changing our culture of group interaction through the education of new communications mediums and behavioral patterns. This info-cultural reeducation must have at its heart edu-mentorship between all levels of community members and a spirit of motivated community learning, grouped by shared interests.
Learning by modem is something that must be experienced to be understood. Teaching by modem is a skill anyone could exercise to share their knowledge and expertise on ANY subject. Could an information society evolve in any direction other than maximal knowledge sharing? The awesome challenge is how to comprehensively and effectively teach the creation of, and active participation within, fruitful, virtual learning communities, locally, regionally, nationally and internationally.
The Big Sky Telegraph has been offering free online lessons for four and a half years. Dissemination of modems and training has been accelerated by Montanans serving as traveling Circuit Riders hosting community demonstrations, by resident Community Telegraphers sharing their skills locally and regionally, by online Teletutors, offering hightouch handholding for the newly initiated. We're all kindergartners in the information age, but we must learn the same as kindergartners, with direct hands-on experience and warm encouragement from those around us.
Every one of us must learn to become an electronic citizen of the information age. We cannot afford the human costs of letting a percentage of our community members miss out on the survival skills they need. Mastery learning and learning partnerships become vitally necessary, and are actually conveniently feasible.
Big Sky Telegraph encourages anyone, anytime, from anywhere to call in to receive free online lessons, interact with resource persons and librarians, and literally to take ownership of the opportunity for sharing this technology now makes available. With a theme of goodnaturedness and common sense, Big Sky Telegraph is a `friends of friends' network where Montanan's are jointly exploring how to fight information overload and how to most effectively help one another. Montanan's are pioneering new ways to rebuild and rehumanize our deteriorating communities through an economy of caring. Netrovers and infoscouts gleen quality information from national and international sources to share at home.
Action is the watchword, marked by the proliferation of low- cost community networks (bbses) which can be installed on PC's, Macs or IIe's, to be located in homes, schools, libraries and businesses. They offer local choices for customization, cultural orientation, and free access to community discussion forums and information selected for dissemination. The smaller the online discussion group, the more frequent and higher quality the interaction, making community networks the logical seedbed for innovation, inevitably branching out to other networks for more expertise and information as initiatives develop.
The global race for economic leadership worldwide will depend on what nations can most quickly and thoroughly empower their individuals with the equipment, training and vision to fulfill their maximum potential in this unprecedentedly rich infomarketplace. Individual collections of specific information and services can quickly find a global market, distributed among widely scattered individuals linked conveniently by asynchronous telecommunications.
Though the potentially huge mass market for information services is still emerging, logic suggests that fun and friendship would be the most sought out information services; interaction with others in the uniquely mind-to-mind intimate communications medium. The joy of sharing the learning experience is heightened with a sense of united purpose. Growing self-esteem through acquisition of new skills creates the desire to teach others, and a wonderful self-perpetuating cycle begins.
Relevant ongoing telecommunicated science math education MUST begin to include all community members and highlight global economics, small scale computerized manufacturing methods with new materials and telepreneurship. Minigrants for individuals to innovate with telecommunications and entrepreneurship would begin a Johnny Appleseed reflowering of American individual entrepreneurship, of techno-individualism!
The odds are great that 5 billion individual imaginations, suddenly connected and empowered by inexpensive notebook computers and free public global telecommunications through local community networks, would bring forth the liberating collaborations the ultimate promise of educational freedom and connectivity holds for all humankind. Electronic citizenship in the global community would mean we'd all be armed with the facts, to begin each day with the best solutions available through maximum connectivity at minimum cost.
Here are the working models, in simple terms:
REGIONAL MODEL: The Big Sky Telegraph is a 386 microcomputer running the Unix operating system with eight incoming phone lines. Anyone can call in and learn the economies of long distance interaction. Prime time rates of 25 cents per minute translate to a nickel per page transmission rates at 1200 baud. Skills emphasized to minimize the costs of online time are 1. capturing text for off-line reading and 2. uploading prewritten messages and documents. A five dollar weekly phone budget can mean over 80 pages of quality text routinely sent and received in a twenty minute session. A 9600 baud modem drops costs to under a penny a page at prime time rates!
Any group or organization can request an online public conference and/or files area. Individual innovations are actively encouraged. As information condenses to knowledge which condenses to wisdom, Big Sky Telegraph's goal is to provide the highest quality information possible.
LOCAL MODEL: A "Tinysky" Community network running on a 286 PC, Macintosh or IIe (with hard disk) can provide an entire community with the option for free local access to whatever information and discussion conferences that community desires. Automated single, nightly phone calls can exchange whole conferences and single messages with other community systems and the Internet. Such a system can be used for proprietary, encrypted, global trade communications with individuals using a similar local community network. This type of "seed" system is only the first step in the evolution of more sophisticated networks and technologies, the pace of which will be dictated by economics. A community system is as changeable as a document on an individual's word processor. A community system can become a living electronic journal of a community's struggle for identity and success, coauthored daily by the citizens themselves.
OFFLINE READER: A class can line up at the school-based bbs and individually insert their disks to quickly receive all new messages in their selected conferences. Students would then go to their microcomputer workstations to read incoming messages and write their responses. At the end of the period students would reinsert their disks and the bbs would hold their outgoing correspondence until midnight when it would make the single nightly phone call to exchange information globally, costing under $50/month. This model could serve an entire community, until residential PC's are acquired, through a public library or office.
INDIVIDUAL MODEL: Not everyone wants to be a computer telecommunications whiz, but many people aspire to be writers, teachers, or at least to have their opinions known. A "POINT DISK" would be simply inserted in a PC and a single command given. The disk would initiate an online call, pickup all new messages in selected conferences and send any messages held on the disk. Upon completion of the automated call, the user would read new messages, and respond offline, directly onto the disk, using the on disk word processor. Then the initial command would be repeated and messages would be automatically sent.
The global Internet is expected to be open to commercial traffic by October, 1992. All the above models will be compatible with Internet e-mail exchange. (Editor's note: The "Internet" is a global supernetwork of interlinked networks, comprosing over 1000 networks, 500,000 computers, and over a million users a day. Most of the action is at Universities and large government and corporate offices. But access is spreading, and soon will be widely available. How Internet access and services develop is crucial, but most folks havn't even heard of it yet. Check into it.)
A hometown example: Two hundred laptops distributed across the town of Dillon, MT (Population 4,000) seeding the health, economic development, educational, and public service communities, with the necessary tools, connections, and an abundance of friendly one-on-one mentorship over a two-year period, could be an opportunity to "make-the-case" as to the real benefits Internet access might bring to a community.
With the help of Western Montana College, an innovative, technologically-equipped 4-year teachers college, (and home of Big Sky Telegraph,) Dillon could be the first community-wide purposeful implementation of global Internet information, showcasing whether or not such connectivity can truly translate to community benefit. The hardscrabble practicality of Montanans has much to teach.
EPILOGUE: Our nation needs a teleliterate leader to inspire, and provide access for individual participation via electronic democracy. Someone with faith in Americans that they can determine their own destinies, that western techno-individualism is Pro-America!
You can reach Frank Odasz Western Montana College, Dillon, MT, 59725 Voice:406-683-7338; Fax 406-683-7493; Fidonet: 1:346/3: Internet: franko@bigsky.dillon.mt.us
You can sign onto Big Sky Telegraph (it's free) at 406-683-7680 1200 baud,
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