The Cutting Edge: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : Educational Visionaries Cast Wide Net
If we build it, they will come.
That could be the motto for NetDay, a project that aims to do nothing less than wire every school in California to the Internet. Once the links are built, the state’s schoolchildren will find the Net irresistible, say NetDay organizers John Gage, chief scientist at Sun Microsystems Inc., and Michael Kaufman, director of information technology at public television station KQED-TV here. Reading might even come back in style.
Gage and Kaufman’s unlikely plan calls for volunteers to head down to their local schools to “pull wire” on Saturday, March 9. To round up the 20,000 people they think they’ll need, the two irrepressible characters, both children of the ‘60s, have applied some rusty grass-roots organizing skills.
Rather than handing out leaflets on busy street corners, they’re using the Internet to spread the word. A World Wide Web site--https://www.netday96.com/--gives updates on the schools that need help and allows volunteers to sign up. Maps allow computer users to point on a region and get a listing of schools. So far, about 7,000 volunteers have signed up.
Labor may eventually be the least of the project’s problems: Wiring, after all, is useful only if there are computers and Internet access accounts. Some corporate sponsors have pledged to help out--Pacific Telesis Group will pay for 1,000 Internet connection kits, AT&T; Corp. has said it will use wireless connections to link 10 schools, and MCA Inc. has promised to work with Los Angeles-area schools, although the amount of its commitment remains to be worked out. But more help will doubtless be needed.
Gage and Kaufman already have overcome some formidable obstacles. The idea for NetDay began when Gage was consulting to the state Public Utilities Commission on wiring the schools. Kaufman came to the PUC with a proposal, but the plan stalled as a result of bureaucratic bickering. So the two decided to pursue the idea on their own.
For the last month, they have crisscrossed the state, signing up sponsors such as Pacific Bell and meeting with various, often-contentious factions with an interest in the state’s schools--boards of education, administrators, teachers and unions.
“We got a lot of ‘Who are you guys?’ ” Kaufman says. “I’ve walked into a lot of meetings where people were defensive,” Gage concurs. “But I’ve never left feeling that things didn’t work out.”
A turning point came when the 180,000-member California State Employees Assn., a group that could have felt threatened by the use of nonunion workers, endorsed NetDay. “After that, I thought this could really work,” Gage says.
But dealing with the vast inequalities among California schools remains a challenge. Affluent schools--especially those in Silicon Valley--have no shortage of volunteers, even though they are arguably least in need of help. Schools in poorer areas have attracted few, if any, volunteers.
The Web site, which Gage created himself, now flags schools without volunteers with the color red. Those with four or fewer volunteers are colored yellow, and those with more are colored green.
“If we can get the whole damn state colored yellow, then that will be really something,” Gage says. He figures that will take about 20,000 volunteers.
Gage says he is heartened by the support NetDay has received in some unlikely places.
“You see yellows scattered in the boonies,” he says. “It shows the ubiquity of the Net. . . . because there has been no press coverage in those areas. The only way people could have found out about this is through the Internet.”
