Online School Is No Longer a Lonely Outpost

Only 12, Ryan Garcia already has cruised the information superhighway enough to know that it can be worth the trip.

“Sometimes,” said the sixth-grader at Juarez-Lincoln School, “we find things we don’t even know.”

Coming across the strange or new, beautiful or merely distant on the Internet via computer modem and high-speed data lines has become commonplace in the past year or so at this school, three miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.

Here, third-graders studying the American bald eagle exchanged e-mail with leading raptor experts in Minnesota, inspiring a school fund-raising drive to adopt one of the grand birds; sixth-graders researching ancient Egypt examined architectural details of tombs and temples posted on the World Wide Web; and third- and fourth-graders coauthored a mystery story during video conferences with a class in Queens, N.Y.

For now, Juarez-Lincoln remains an outpost on the frontier of the Information Age, brought into being with the help of about $250,000 worth of equipment and technical assistance from Pacific Bell and other companies, including AT&T; and Apple computer.

As part of a $100-million effort launched two years ago by the telephone company, Juarez-Lincoln was set up as a model to showcase the educational value of high-speed telecommunications and to encourage schools and libraries across the state to link up with the Internet.

Schools participating in Pacific Bell’s “Education First” initiative receive as many as five high-speed data lines--which allow for more rapid data transmission than regular telephone lines as well as for video conferencing--and unlimited free usage for a year. After that, schools will pay a special flat educational rate given temporary approval just this past week by the California Public Utilities Commission.

But California schools have responded far more slowly to the offer than the company had expected, reflecting both a lack of money to spend on the computers, wiring and other equipment needed to make use of the lines, and a shortage of expertise to sort out numerous technical questions.

Although the company was willing to wire as many as 8,600 public and private schools and libraries, only 600, including 45 in Los Angeles County, are online. The company expects 400 more to sign up by the end of the school year.

Phil Quigley, the chairman and chief executive officer of Pacific Telesis, PacBell’s parent company, said the company may have failed to market its offer aggressively enough at first. He believes, however, that momentum is building.

“I think people are getting the message,” Quigley said. “There’s a certain amount of resistance to any change . . . but [the Internet] is just too pervasive to ignore.”

Indeed, across California and the United States, thousands of schools--pushed by business leaders, politicians and parents--are searching for ways to join an interconnected world in which vast rivers of data can be tapped with a few keystrokes.

In a visit to California last summer and again last month, President Clinton embraced public-private partnerships such as Education First, saying they were essential to achieving his goal of providing all the nation’s libraries and classrooms Internet access by the end of the decade.

Next month, several communications companies, including AT&T; and MCI, will begin promoting special educational discounts and software giveaways, to coincide with a highly publicized statewide volunteer “barn raising” organized by high-tech firms and aimed at wiring hundreds of classrooms into computer networks.

But gaining an onramp to the information superhighway is only a small, if essential, piece of the technology puzzle facing schools.

Jim Lanich, executive director of an effort to network via computer all 1,670 schools in Los Angeles County, said many teachers and principals feel pressured to computerize their schools. But, he said, they’re frustrated because there are no statewide or national standards to follow.

“They don’t know where to start . . . and it’s an education process just to . . . figure out what questions to ask.”

Indeed, observers worry that many schools jumping on the technology bandwagon are doing so blindly, without considering the longer-term costs of maintaining the new tool or training teachers to use it. Putting in wiring and wide-band communications lines is actually the easiest and least expensive aspect of an undertaking that is expected to cost tens of billions of dollars to establish and as much as $14 billion annually to maintain, according to a report by the McKinsey & Co. consulting firm to the National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council.

Another concern is that schools are investing in hardware or wiring before they’ve decided on what educational goals the new equipment will help achieve. Vic Placeres, director of school information systems for the Los Angeles Unified School District, said he urges faculties struggling to select from the confusing menu of choices for wiring and hardware purchases to focus on how to improve curriculum and “not get caught up in the technology.”

Unless teachers learn to incorporate into their classrooms open-ended research projects that capitalize on the online world’s features, little will be gained.

“If we do all of this and all it means is that there are some computers connected to some lines and it hasn’t changed education and hasn’t created more opportunities for students to access information for achievement . . . then we shouldn’t even do it because it is a significant investment of resources, dollars and people hours,” said Michael Powell, PacBell’s group director for education.

Yet, even as some are urging schools to go slow, others see a need to move quickly, while investing in technology remains high on political and corporate agendas. Otherwise, they warn, some schools and their students may be bypassed altogether.

When Pacific Bell’s initiative was launched, Juarez-Lincoln was in the enviable position of having started planning five years earlier for how it would use technology to better serve students.

Serving an area of Chula Vista where the working poor live in aging, cheaply built ranch homes with bars on the windows and few trees, Juarez-Lincoln is not much to look at from the outside.

Inside the 550-student school, though, is a display of technology that draws admiring visitors from across the state. Sixty-eight modern, high-powered personal computers are networked, allowing students and teachers to e-mail one another as well as computer users worldwide. Four of the machines are equipped with video-conference equipment, including one that displays images on a 55-inch television screen.

Just as important as the technology, teachers said, is a support team made up of teachers and a full-time consultant paid out of the school budget. The team does most of the equipment maintenance, trouble shoots technical glitches, and provides training and instant help to teachers.

Principal Connie L. Smith said the technology and access to information that it provides help motivate her students, nearly half of whom come to school speaking a language other than English, and closes the opportunity gap between them and peers in more affluent communities. “It gives our babies the boost they need,” she said.

Juarez-Lincoln’s test scores, particularly in reading, are on the rise and compare favorably with other schools serving similar student populations. But Smith said that it’s too early to credit the school’s use of technology.

What’s obvious to a visitor, however, is the almost magnetic power that the computers have for students. A clutch of sixth-grade boys, still sweaty from the playground, rush to a terminal and coach one another on how to access a photograph from a web site for insertion into a report on ancient China. “It’s fun,” said Jose Yanez, 11. “It’s easier for me to do my homework.”

In another classroom, children beg to be allowed to stay in from recess to practice e-mailing their friends. Teachers said even the youngest children are anxious to learn to read so they can receive messages. And when it rains during a lunch period, driving children indoors, every keyboard is suddenly in use.

Sharon Quinn, who teaches a combined class of third- and fourth-graders, said access to the Internet also has stirred the faculty’s enthusiasm.

“Teachers know now that computers are important and they are . . . subscribing to online services, staying after school and training each other without being paid,” Quinn said.

Teachers said incorporating technology into classes has required them to learn new skills, and the transition has not always been easy. But Smith said the school is committed to continuing its efforts, even after money from the PacBell grant runs out.

“There is no choice, it has to be done,” she said. “What we have to do is figure out how to do it.”