New Wiring Gives School a Net Gain

At first glance, this seemed like a typical sleepy Saturday at St. Norbert School.

But behind the tan brick walls, a revolution was brewing: the school was getting wired for the Internet.

Inside the computer room, a man in a mustard-colored T-shirt stood atop a ladder, drilling a hole into the wall. More workers moved around the courtyard, some toting boxes brimming with cobalt-blue cable.

This was NetDay2, and the small Roman Catholic elementary school here was one of dozens of Southern California schools participating.

For the second time in seven months, volunteers across the region were working to wire schools so students can connect to the Internet on classroom computers.

“I’m very excited. Kids have been asking, ‘How come we’re not online?’ ” said computer science teacher Maureen Haskins as she watched volunteers bustle around her classroom with ladders and cable. Most of the volunteers were Pacific Bell employees and their family members.

Like many schools nationwide, St. Norbert has lacked the technology to rush pell-mell into the Information Age. Although the computer room already has more than a dozen computers, the school falls short of what has been touted by education leaders as an important national goal: the capacity to put Internet access into as many classrooms as possible.

The first NetDay in California triggered a wave of national interest in March, and NetDay2 was marked Saturday in seven other states and the District of Columbia.

Among those contributing to the effort were Pacific Bell, GTE California, MCI, Sun Microsystems, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USC, UCLA, Kaiser Permanente and IBM.

More than a dozen volunteers descended on St. Norbert, a 31-year-old school with 320 students and a keen interest in upgrading its computer facilities.

Most volunteers, clad in matching T-shirts, were working on their days off. They brought along 2,000 feet of cable, intent on wiring 10 classrooms and two offices.

The new wiring alone will not move St. Norbert’s classrooms directly onto the Internet. Still needed are more computers and other equipment, and school officials say they are working to raise the thousands of dollars needed to further upgrade their computer capacity.