Tape #220 - Building Community Capacity and Distance Learning

Administrator of the World Utility Service of the USDA.  We are a infrastructure lending agency which is under the supervision umbrella of Undersecretary Jill Long-Thompson.  And today we are going to be talking about distance education and how that can help your community grow.  And on our panel today is Dr. Ravoti Balla Chrishman (I hope I didn't mangle that!), Sandra Block who is the Communications Director of the National Catholic Real Life Conference, and I sorry Dr. Balla Chrishman is with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N.  Also with us is Dr. Barbara White who is the Deputy Administrator of the Cooperative State Research and Extension Service which is also an agency of the USDA.  And I hope that we can send you away with some resources and some information about how you can make distance education work in your community.

 

Good afternoon everybody.  I am very pleased to be here.  As of interest to you, I come from Ipoh, but I am based in Bangkok.  I am not a native Thai, so I live in Thailand, but I would for an international agency so don't ask me any real details on Thailand.  I will only be able to give you general answers.  Today we are looking at something in terms of distance education.  What is our interest in it.  We are trying to achieve, we are trying to look in morals and matters to which we can reach the goals more effectively.  Because with respect to what you all think, all that technology, electronics, and computers coming from Asia, still a large number of Indochinamen who watch television, listen to the radio, but not necessarily easily using technology.  So my paper is going to be more or less to all of you of everything on where women and technology is going, and how we can use distance education as a possible way to transferring technology to all women.  In general, we find in general that we are moving away from thinking that all people are agricultural people.  We are thinking broader than that.  Because they do agricultural production; they do some off-farm production; they also do various other kind of...participating in many of the organizations which are introducing in rural areas.  So it is becoming a much more complex system where they have multiple production and multiple demands all the time so all women are not going to have that much time sparing to come to some of the training which we are organizing periodically.  So it is getting more and more terms of rural women in many types of production.  So we also look at it and feel that rural women, we see a change in looking at it.  But we look at them that they are producers in the farm, in the home, and also they do a lot of off-farm work where they are doing a lot of production there.  We are also looking at them that they are marketers.  If you look at all of Asia and for the most part of the Pacific too, they are important people selling food and foot products.  And they are also very important at the household level, they are buyers and consumers.  So the information need is going to be in all these areas which we are looking into women and technology.  So when we look at these kind of issues we also look into women, how are we really going to look into technologies for women.  So we in the women development section of FAO are trying to impress upon on colleagues production technology alone does not help women in terms of achieving the productivity as well as welfare.  So look at women in production, and also what kind of conditions and household production information for them.  Then those confidences, all that they share we are now introducing what we call "women self-help probe."  We are introducing various other kind of small-group projects and small-group programs and we are introducing _______.  We are introducing so many new ideas into the system, women do need a blood taste to deal with this kind of different things that we are introducing in the name of development.  So in production we various other issues, but particularly in agriculture, a few colleagues have been very good in moving from different stages of technology.  They started with the traditional technology.  They moved on to various green evolutions where they decided that there is a right kind of seed, right kind of fertilizer, right kind of pesticide.  It has increased productivity, but it has started giving problems in terms of the right amount of soil fertility.  So we are now looking into sustainable agriculture so that the various levels of technology that have been introducing, most part women have been doing the traditional technology most of the time because it did not transfer very well.

 

Then in consumption, various types of consumer products have come in the rural areas.  You find in Thailand that plastic has become so much apart of the livelihood.  You find people with plastic bags and containers.  They work with them all the time.  And when they cover food, you find other packaged food, plus you will see that they are now importing canned food, tuna, but not fresh-catched tuna or any other fish.  So those kind of consumer products also entering the rural areas, so they knew that special knowledge to deal with these kind of changes.  We are introducing with them self-help, we are predict this is a very important thing in many parts of Asia.   There are so many credited programs in Asia that sometimes a single one could be a member credited programs, or sometimes nobody gets the credit because the women do not organize themselves well.  So we find some kind of gap between where the technology is going and women that are getting access to it.  So as the economy changes, the enterprises are changing.  As the enterprises are changing, there are new technologies coming into the system and also progressing very fast and we are not able to catch up with that, or there are some bias in technology development which ignores women's needs, or even in the technology transfer there are problems because you will find many times that the extension agents do not reach the humans very well.  And there are some male and female communication problems in some countries, but not in all places.  So there are some social constraints and bias within the extension system which has acted as barriers in teaching women, so there are some technology gaps for women.  Also there is a big disparity in issue in terms of rural and urban.  And other women is Asia look very progressive, very dynamic in every other progression, but when it comes to rural areas, high in illiteracy, lack of public health, and lack of the ability to articulate the needs of the public system, all of the above differences do exist.  And these come because they do not have the right to publicly do that, or the education is very poor, or the forced agenda still an issue and the traditional way of a very male-dominated way of decision-making or creating certain access to women.  And also age-placing is an important factor in Asia because an age male, an older male will have a much more reverence and power to make certain decisions.  And the household is very different in terms of a man and women's household.  Even though all this context to be looking into what kind of technology we are looking for women.  So we had to look in technology is the sense of what they can afford in terms of cash, or they have assets, or they can even create a credit for taxes in technology.  And also be of more interest is the second.  That's not important, but the second part is appropriateness the user is able to use the technology, the use of their ability.  They will be looking at the knowledge, the skill and the time they have.  The experience they have.  The time is an important factor particularly because women have so many different jobs to do in the rural systems.  Given all that, the issues FAO is looking into, looking at distance education as one of the measures to reaching rural women.  And we do have problem in reaching rural women even though with respect to of all the sexes each year.  And now we are having a downturn in the sexes, we are to look at the women's multiply enterprises and the technology researched. Most often women's technology needs a woman in there set the agenda of the new technology development.  Also then we then go on to technology transfer.  We look at the family label.  Because most often women are considered as family label. So when they do an economic calculation. Ok, family is given a label, who's label is given the women's label so that it is never a question that these people are contributing to the production.

 

And because it is also a problem on food and infrastructure in most of the rural areas, they are improving, but still not keeping pace with the need.  There is a difference between profiture gap verses lack of it.  Some places it is improving, but there is a gap existing.  And also, women organize the work very differently in terms of the rural sector, as most of you know, the farm work and the home work is never separated.  It kind of moves from one to the other.  If you bring the harvest home, we are not far sure that when the women processes rice, or processes of wheat, or processes of maize, is it the home work or is it the farm work.  So they are continuously moving between the two, so it very difficult for my scientist to understand where the farm work ends and the home work begins because they are continuously working on these two things moving forward and backward.  There are also excessive time demands and also seasonal time demands.  Sometimes when the production, like when you have the rice system, then women are very involved in planting rice, and if it is a weeding system, then women are very involved in weeding rice so that during seasonal time, it is very difficult for extension agents to understand that these are the times you cannot access women.  They are not going to come to you for training.  They are not going to be working with you.

 

And high illiteracy and social constraints and the lack of political power in the rural area is very common.  But it may be changing in some areas because we are moving the political system from the centralized administration to the local administration, so things might change.  When we come to all this kind of areas, yes, we are now looking into, will distance education reality improve the situation of technology transfer?  Could we bypass some bias, gender bias, male men and women not meeting each other?  So sending information through certain kind of human technology used so that women could be reached much broadly, consistently, more often, when they have time, they can learn it.  Because not the extension agency goes between nine and four and those are the times they wanted to visit.  Or sometimes they go on a particular seasonal time, men are available and women are not available.  And we train the trainers and the trainers are hired by somebody else once they are very good, or they get transferred if they are good trainers.  So, it is virtually a loss of training opportunity for women.  And most places we are successful in doing certain kind of long-term training, but the women are not really happy to come for a very long time away from home.  So these are the things we are trying to now looking into the options.  So then we have to look at the information technology that may be available for distance education.  In the initial prefix the data that is coming up, that television and radio increasing.  Radio would become to almost universal access to most often very soon.  And then post offices, actually there are more radios than post offices.  So you find that mail offices are not the traditional way of doing distance education where you mail the material to them and decided later on that it may not be a good approach.  And the telephone lines are still not very good.  The poor telephone connections, so your internet, e-net, and dos applications may not be working.  The computer may increase in the future.  At this point in time, we do not this is a very viable option in many of the rural areas in Asia. 

 

Given in this context, we had a very extensive meeting with the partner countries in the region, and they have, their conclusion is that we have to think of Asia as a very important medium because it is most available, easy access, and cost effective.  And the television is gaining importance,increasingly more available, becoming affordable.  And some computer internet for the rural women in Asia may not be a good approach, but we are expanding on that approach to upgrade the skills of the extension agents so they could come up with their learning levels to keep up with the new technology using the internet-based education because most of the extension agents come for training for organized education situations.  When you look at the issues in terms of what would be the special consideration for distance education for rural women.  Again the committee, not the committee, the counciltation recommendation is:  any information package that goes to rural women should be an integrated package because she is a farmer; she is a producer; she is a homemaker; home processor.  And also we have to see that women have multiple production is the way women do things the rural areas and kind of a learning initiative should be recognized.  And we also have to recognize that most of the women in Asia are in the rural areas and illiterate, including China. And the distance education has another problem of remoteness.  I will come to that.  When I say that illiteracy is very common in Asia.  It is very true, except a few countries which have been previous feminist countries, except with the exception of China.  Most of them the rural illiteracy is higher than urban situation.  Most women are illiterate.  In China, at the age group of 42, 50, it comes up to nearly 40 percent illiteracy.  That was a generation which was disgraced from going to school.  And also in China, and places like that, the women are becoming the main farmers because of the economy marketizing and many people are moving into new opportunities.

 

And the distance education has another issue of remoteness. Most often the urban learner is able to do that much better and because they can sit and learn, down load the program, and work with the program.  With rural women it is a little difficult situation because they have to buy a place and facilitate it so that they have some kind of human touch.  And we are looking at a program in Slovenia, they are doing it very well.  They are combining technology and people in a tutormentorial system which is looking very promising for us as a model. 

 

Then, it also has been, we may have to compliment some of the distance learning methods to some traditional methods because have had extension agents getting information going them or creating several learning groups in the areas because we now have only production groups, creating groups, for every intervention we have a group.  We are wondering why create so many groups, could not these groups become the learning groups so that we don't have one more group because everyone who comes wants to create a special group.  So we are trying to see how these groups could become multiple learning groups and things like that.

 

On that approach would look a local women as facilitators because most often you need a facilitator for some other rural area.  So instead of losing or bringing the training from the outside, or losing the trainer, you would like to see some local people also facilitating.

 

While I say there are other recommendations, I am not going to look into in this major idea center.  Where do we come into _________?   What will be their _______ admission after?  I jokingly tell my colleagues who work on a very state-of-the-art satellite communication year all in start of the new generation, we are in the old generation.  So we are still looking to some of the things that ________ would look into mission to generate a communitive rule committee.  So when you come into that way, we look to access to learning technology and training. So, on that kind of benefaction philosophy which we have generally the communitive rule communications.  So do women have access to taking education technology; and they have access to information technology;, how we could use it for technology transfer. 

 

And where are we at this time?  My colleagues in certain areas and we will be working together.  One would be to look into:  Women in development service.  We are _________ into key activity for us for the next few planned years because your have to develop a plan every two years.  So, we are looking at distance education for all women recommending important activity.  We work with ______________ education extension service who is looking into operating extension skills by using internet based education.  I think that probably should come under the internet for extension learning and education.  And Women in Development Service, we are looking into incorporation between Women in Development Service and the Extension Education Service.  And a few regional offices will be working with the Economic and Social Commission for the United Nations for Asia and the Pacific.  They have a big program looking into satellite application for a, a satellite application for what, for rural development.  So we are working.  Every meeting we had gone into on this, my colleagues at ESCAP, there is a strong presence of Japanese telephone companies, and Japanese computer guys, and Japanese digital satellite, digital satellite that is coming up in 2000.  So they are all there.  So we are now looking into, I have, there are Asia Pacific, most of the countries have satellite interest.  They are looking at India.  There is a very very strong program using communication to work with the tribal public and they are feeding in programs with the help of the state's program in India.  And in Mongolia, there is a big program funded by INESCO looking into using distance education to rural development.  And in the Philippines got a very strong program based on producing agriculture and they are also looking into using distance education, agriculture and telecommunication.  And a _______ one channel, a garment channel, looking into agriculture and agriculture production.  And INESCO in a very strong actor in the Micron region, southern Asia, and northern Thailand, Vietnam and Laos where they are looking into distance education.  Our reality is not to create a very specialized program.  We had to realize that the cost factor was an important factor.  So we would rather look into a classical approach. Suppose there are three countries that have a common production system, like a rice/fish system.  What are their common problems and common technology?  What are the production situation and processing?  And in Butung they are interested, but the Butung has got really a remoteness problem.  There, there could be discrete programs.  We would develop a good educational program, send it to an extension agent.  They have a development on blocks.  They will sit with the people and show the film and discuss it.  So different approaches would be worked and we are working very closely with the Ingragon, an opening city in India, which has already established a long-distance educational program.  They are a very good production unit. So we are looking to see, but when it comes to the level of women at the rural level, we would certainly like to down-grade the economy, no down-grade the economy, make the economy more friendly, move the technology to be more friendly, to be done through the use of a good facilitator who would be periodically trained.  This is the mission we have.  And then we have work on it in the future.  And hopefully this will work.   And ah, coming from an educational background, and coming from a strong bias in technology transfer, having been many land grant institutions, I think that this is a feasible methodology because there are many makeshift programs in Asia.  There are people working with us.  And there are people who already have a lot of experience in working on these areas, so we are hopeful that something concrete will come, will work with women in the long run.

 

We also have the language problem.  Every country faces a different language and they have a dialect within the language. So, that would be the biggest challenge in having a good distance educational program.  Thank you.

 

(APPLAUSE)

 

Good Afternoon.  I have a paper to present and a powerpoint presentation and all that.  And when I found that I have only 15 minutes to talk to you folks, I started thinking about it, and I decided to do, to give you what I think are the main messages that I would like you to take away with.

 

Can I ask for a show of hands of how many people are not from the US?  So quite a few.  Ok, I will take that into consideration when I offer my comments.  Can you hear me ok, because I know that my voice doesn't carry very well.  OK. OK.

 

I'm the Communications Director for the National Catholic Real Life Conference.  Oh, I sorry.  OK.  I'm Communications Director for the National Catholic Real Life Conference.  And one of the things I do in addition to publications, and radio, and telecommunications, is I travel around the United States talking to rural women  and offering opportunities for dialogue discussion on ways to improve, enhance, and encourage their lives.  I am working toward a doctorate in Adult Leadership Development and my area of expertise is rural telecommunications, and I am doing that because I see that as a very tool to help rural women to empower themselves. 

 

The first thing I wanted to offer is that we are living in the information age and information is power.  Lots and Lots of rural women do not have access to information.  And if you do not have access to information in this time we are living in, you don't have power.  Rural women need power.  They need access to information. One of the things, ah, one of, and a, I'm a minister.  And one of the things I do is to go around and talk about building a community.  And one way to build community is to get on chat room.  There is nothing more isolated in Nebraska than an Episcopalian priest out in the rural areas.  So in order to talk to other Episcopalian priests, one easy way is to get on the internet and get on the chat room, and so for.  I was telling this to a group in Kansas, and one raised her hand and said that we are dealing with two party phone lines here.  There is no way we can have access to the internet.

 

Anyway, I wanted to talk about the 1936 rural, ah, Electrification Act that was passed in the United States.  And this was an Act to help gain access to electricity for everyone, rural areas.  This Act, it has sometimes been talked about as where the life ended before this Act was passed.  The life ended in city areas.  Rural women could get magazines that had city women with their washers and dryers and electric appliances and so forth and rural women did not have access to that.  In a way, we are still dealing with that in terms of rural telecommunications.  Rural women could look at what they wanted, but they did not have access to it.  These appliances were labor-saving devices and in many ways helped improve the rural women's way of life.

 

Now, we are talking about power.  Access to ideas. Access to knowledge and leadership schools.  We are talking about community the women do not have access to.  We have, many of us do have electronic appliances to help us and so forth, but we don't necessarily have access to telecommunications.  But all information that is available out there is not necessarily positive.  For instance, in the United States in 1871, Congress passed something called the Moral Act which helped create the extension service and land grant colleges.  And part of the mission of the land grant colleges was to provide information.  Since 1871, land grant colleges were a primarily source of information, dissemination of information for rural people.  Not all of the information passed out by the extension service has, in fact, built community or have been a positive force for rural people.  So, just because we have information, there are some basic principles we need to way against the information that is given to us or presented to us.

 

Some of these basic principles that we live up to at National Catholic is the principle of human dignity. I'm, when I first started using the internet, I wanted to get out and find out all the information I could about rural women.  I did one of these searches on one of the search engines.  I typed in rural women.  I can't tell you the information that came up.  Most of it was pornography.  The church lady in me just leaped right out.  Now I have got a little more sophisticated about how I do searches.  But, there is a lot of information out there that is not positive.  It does not contribute to the basic principle of human dignity.

 

Second, is the principle of subsidiarity. Which means, that decision-making should be and can be done by the lowest possible level.  In other words, people living in their local community should be able to make decisions that effect their local community.  That includes information and access to technology.

 

And the third principle is the principle of the common good. That information that comes in should be weighted against the principle.  Does it contribute to the common good of your family and your whole community, your local area? 

Also, another reason that I think that it is important for women to get, or for women to become involved in telecommunications is that it collapses time and distance.  In areas of the western United States, distance is a major problem.  It is difficult to get access to libraries, to other women talk about issues.  To be able to take advantage of leadership courses.  One example that I would like to offer is that a rural science teacher in Oregon.  And this happens to be a man, but he was totally isolated and had no other science teachers to talk to.  So he got on one of the bulletin boards and posted his questions on the internet.  He felt that within a half-hour he was talking to 25 of the best minds that are out there in terms of how to teach kids science.  He started with just one computer and one modem.  Soon he had his entire county networked.  So he had built community.  Improved the science curriculum for the kids.  And then got the kids and parents involved in it too.  For one person taking one example of initiative, he enhanced and improved the life of the students, himself, and the local community, as well as the education system in that area.

 

Another example I would like to lift up is that of women empowering themselves.  That's a group called ACENET based in Appalachia.  These are women who are primarily getting off of welfare and they produce salsa.  In their gardens they might do herb;, they might do potpourri and so forth.  They got together and they searched out on the internet recipes and so forth.  But they realized that they didn't have enough knowledge of technology, but they knew that the high school kids, these kids know all about this stuff.  So they brought in unusual partnerships and know have quite a sophisticated marketing PR program that is available through the internet.  Meanwhile, some of these high school kids have gone onto college.  They have become computer programmers. So it empowered the children.  It provided the women with ways to earn money. And some of the value-added products that they are marketing has substantially improved and enhanced the standard of living in that local area. 

 

A third example that I would like to talk about is in Carney, Nebraska.  Carney, Nebraska is a small city located right off of I-80 and their town decided how they were going to do rural economic development was by attracting the rural telecommunications industry.  They were successful in bringing the industry in, but the industry paid minimum wage, just above minimum wage jobs, part-time jobs and no benefit.  Now, I think that is a serious question as to whether it did contribute to human dignity, local decision making, and the common good of the community. 

 

Another thing I would like to talk about it how we look at a glass.  Do we look at a glass as half empty or half full.  And when we look at world telecommunications, we can look at that glass as half full.  That in our area, with kind of women, there are all kind of ways that we can come together and look at who has what gifts and how we can work together to get the gifts.  We don't have to rely on somebody coming in with this wonderful program for us.  We can do it ourselves with looking at where are our assets that are located within our community, within our neighborhoods, within ourselves. 

 

 

Surprising alliances can and do happen.  In Iowa we have this rural area that where there is a priest shortage, all over the United States, but in this particular town in southwestern area, the local Catholic school did not have a lot of access to a priest.  So an inter-city Des Moines school connected with them in terms of the internet.  So the kids, every day, in the mornings, would get on the internet and they would talk to each other over the computer.  Now they have developed exchanges with the kids.  So these inter-city kids go live on the farms and the farm kids go live in the city.  This is Des Moines, Iowa, Holy Family School.  It has provided all sorts of positive things for both rural and the urban connections.

 

The final thing that I would like to leave with you is that information is out there.  There's tons of information.  We can hop on the internet and tap into the Smithsonian.  We can look at the ______.  It is outstanding the information that is out there.  We just have to figure out how we can get it.   How we can use it to improve our daily lives and how we can improve our quality, our communities.  One of the things that the, A Time to Act, a Small Farms Commission Report just released, is perhaps the best export that our family farms in the United States have provided is our children.  These children all, many of them have left rural areas and I see rural telecommunications of one real viable way of keeping our children in rural communities.

 

I have tons of information and I look forward to answering any questions.  Thank you.

 

(APPLAUSE)

 

My name is Sandy LePonte and I've got business cards if you want.

 

Well let me welcome you to Washington, D.C.  I am a transplant from Bosiman, Montana.  I was visiting with some of your earlier.  So for those of you, if this is the first time you've been here, believe you me that when I moved here after 27 years in Utah, Idaho, and Montana, that was a bit of a different culture.  But I have adapted pretty well.  I've learned to deal with the traffic, the people, and all of the things that go with the big city.  But one of the things that I haven't forgotten is my years working for Montana State University and for Idaho, ah, Utah State University in rural areas in which people did not have access, not only to information, but if you look toward the twenty-first century, you talking about a knowledge age.  You talking about the information that she is talking about and applying it.  Being able to think through, selectively know who to use that information that you have obtained whether it is through satellite communication, whether it is through the internet.  So, I am very please this afternoon to take my little bit of time to share with you some of the things that an agency,  The Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service here at USDA, and you have some handouts on your chair.  There is one that talks about what that agency is about.  I want to make sure that we are all coming from the same ball park with regard to this agency because I think all of you are familiar, as governments will do, with the concept of right-sizing, down-sizing and reconfigurating.  In 1994, what was known as the Federal Extension Service and the Cooperative Research Service merged together into the agency that I just mentioned.  So our mission targets research, education and outreach. And that is extremely important when you talk about what it means in a community.  To reach out, to help provide access, and to take a look at building the concept of community.  And that one fact sheet with the book header talks about the kinds of audiences we work with through the Land Grant Partnership.  And I heard the words today, partnership, alliances, collaboration, community building.  That is what we are talking about as we look at the agenda for this particular conference.  When you look at what community means, let me just, so we're again all in this same game.  Ah, we are talking about people with commitments, with common interests who are living in particular arenas.  We're talking about common characteristics and interests that are being impacted by the larger society.  And if every we were looking at a time of impact, we look at welfare reform; we look at economics; if we look at social and culture, we are talking about impacts on a larger society.  We are talking about a group that is linked by a common policy, and we all within our own individual cultures have policies and guidelines by which we learn; by which we work with each other.  I think our first speaker talked about language is a barrier.  If ever in this country you have issues of language in learning and providing access to information, that is just one of many that deal with culture.  Those are all apart of this whole issue of looking at the 21st Century. 

 

The other that I would mention in terms of community building is joint ownership.  If you and I don't work together toward a common goal, then we are going to have a real hard time working together in the community.  And one of the ultimate goals of the knowledge age is to be able to provide that access as well as an understanding and being able to critically sort through what that information may mean to me as an individual and to the community that I live in.  I always think that when I am sitting out where you are, it is kind of nice to know well who are these people that are standing up in front of us.  Ah, I'm a mom.  I have twin sons that are 23 which explains the grey hair.  I'm really very young, it just that, it took it toll.  I have a daughter that is 27 and I worked.  I was a grad student.  I lived in a rural community.  I don't, I hope that I never forget what some of those pieces were now that I am in a position where my staff and I try to work with all of the land grant universities as they reach out to their colleagues in the local county environment, as well as other environments.  We work with rural utility service.  We have a lot of intergovernmental interactions.  But I don't think that we have ever seen changes quite like we are seeing now. 

 

What I want to do is to share with you very briefly kind of a state of where we are, where we are going with regard to the perception of what I have of our agency.  One of the things that you will see in this country, and I just came back from Brazil and I see a little bit of it there too, that we have shifted from this idea that here it is.  Now you do something with it in terms of information.  To really look at how do we access the information ourselves and apply it to an educational setting or a problem solving setting.  That's part of building a community in a knowledge and an information age. 

 

A second piece, is rethinking this issue of our whole learning process.  You and I, I look at our children; I look at if I every have grandchildren, which I pretty much ever given up on that, but if I should ever be a grandmother, I wonder at the speed in which these children are learning and applying the technology to problem solving, but at the same time, how much to they really understand, or is it strictly the speed and the efficiency.  So there is a balance there that we have to look at as a community, through our libraries, through our public schools, through the various arenas that that information is provided.  There is no doubt that we are all going to be life-long learners.  You and I are going to learn until the day we are not here anymore.  And that is very critical, very different from what my mother grew up.  Now you are looking at senior citizens with all of their online work and listening to mind extension university and really trying to beef up some of their own skills, and they are seventy-five years old.  That's a community.  That's a community of age.  That's a community of location.  That's a community of interest.

 

The other thing is the whole issue of Just In Time Learning.  And I think that is something that we can't ignore in terms of what you are going to need.  What we are going to need as we move forward.  The future we are talking about is the fact that my daughter and sons will have five to seven career changes in their lifetime.  Now I won't tell you how old I am, but you have probably have figured out fairly close, and I have had six major changes in what I have done.  What does that say for retraining?  And what does that say to the communities who are having to look at downsizing, and changes.  Look at Detroit.  Look at the mass car industry.  What does that mean in terms of access education?  So, taking it out of the formal education, we have a lot to do with community.

 

Many of you I am sure are familiar with the NII, the National Information Infrastructure.  I bring that to you because I think it is extremely important, that especially since 1993, with the Clinton-Gore administration, ah, especially with the work that Mr. Gore has done about the information infrastructure.  What does it mean to have access?  In the public schools, in our communities, in our libraries for help from government and for education.  What does that mean to you?  What can you do? What kind of information can you get a hold of?  What I would suggest to you, what we are looking at is a much more sophisticated level of com-activity, if you will.  We are talking about networking.  If ever there were a group of people in the room that can network, it's this group sitting here.  Women network very well.  We are willing to share.  I'm not saying that the gentlemen in the room are not. I'm only saying that what we know, much through the social sciences, that that's an attribute that the female gender carries.  So we have an opportunity to enhance and increase that networking.  Not with just the people sitting here, also the people globally through organizations, conferences and work just like were in today.

 

The issue is, new ways to access information.  Now, with several of us, and I am doing the same thing, are talking about the concept of distance education.  And let me make sure, if your will, that we are all talking about the same thing.  And this is my bias, and you know when people do little presentations, we always have a bias here and there.  I think we have to be careful that we all understand what it means to learn at a distance.  When we talk about distance education, we are talking about a process.  We are talking about the design of the curriculum and the selection of the delivery mechanicism.  We're talking about a broad process. When we talk about learning, that that's expected outcome.  And whatever technology we use, we should have had an objective we wanted to reach.  And this is very very important when we talk about community building because to set a goal; you set an objective; and then you look for the best strategies and methodologies using technology at a distance to achieve that.

 

And then the facet of that if the issue of distance delivery.  What are we going to use?  Are we going to use satellite technology?  Are we going to look at the internet?  Are we going to use multi-media?  Are we going to use audio conferencing?  Are we going to use print and the post service?  So, we've gotten in this country into, I think, a dilemma that we pick the technology before we pick the learning, good, sound, instructional design to support that.  In a community, there are resources available to help communities to be able to do that as they look at livery, as they look at the infrastructure they are building.

 

Now, very quickly, let me just share with you some of the projects that our agency has supported in terms of working in this particular arena just to give you some examples of community building.  One occurred in Illinois.  We worked with the state extension service and Land Grant University and the telephone company.  Somebody mentioned partnerships earlier.  One of things we've got to do is stop talking to ourselves.  Start talking to our partners, our colleagues, and those collaborators in the community, other agencies.  What can we do with the private industry as well as (SIDE ONE OF TAPE ENDS).

 

(SIDE 2) 

A second one I would mention to you is in New Mexico.  A lady, Jeaney Gleason, who is head of the communications unit in New Mexico State went out and worked with the Navajo.  And was looking at food, and the whole issue of food safety.  How can we use communications and com-activity through KEYAS kinds of systems.  They couldn't come to her, so they went to the library in the local communities and put KEYAS of information and taught these individuals how to use them, both from the reservation and in the small towns.  This was a very, very good project which expanded later on with some work with the Smithsonian.  And I think that one of our speakers mentioned the Smithsonian in another context.  So there again are ways to partner using the technologies.  Providing learning at a distance and that gets the community outside looking at where that knowledge is and how they can use the information.

 

A couple of others that I mentioned, and we were on the same, I think the same line of thinking, and that was this Appalachian project which was a very, very strong project and has been help up, I think, across the country convening stakeholder.  And every forget that word.  If leave with anything from here from Barb White, remember the word stakeholders.  You own a piece of what's going on, but you have to step out there and work together.  We can't do it by ourselves.  This is a wonderful example and if you need more information, I think the two of us and certainly get it for you.

 

Quickly, another one had to do with the Center for Civic Networking.  This is looking at public policies and how we can access through distance education and the concept of delivery at a distance.  Policies, and applying the information to strengthen the communities.

 

A third one, I'm sure that you're, ah Elizabeth is probably familiar with, is the Rural Coalition.  This is a hundred community based organizations, that are, plus looking at Mexico that look at developing leadership within the community and there applying the concept of learning at a distance to this particular arena.

 

And the last one that I would mention is, in West Virginia, which is a coalition which is against domestic violence.  And here is a network which has been set up to help abused, battered women, as well as look at outreach intervention.  And if you stop and think about using the concept education at a distance for prevention, what, imagine the kind of benefits we can get if we are pro-active instead of reactive.  So, these are just four examples of some of the things that are going on now, some of which our agency are involved in, and some of which we have been collaborators and have done some partnering.

 

So, I will leave it at that.  My time is up. The other two pieces are just some general information for you if you wish to get a hold of us, or my staff and a little bit about the unit that I serve as deputy for.

 

(APPLAUSE)

 

Well, my job in this is to kinda bring all this together, and I think I could talk all day about what we do at our US and how.  We have been in the business of building communities for about 60 years.  _______ mentioned the REA.  And the Rural Utility Service is what, oops!, used to be called Rural Electrification Agency Administration.  And we've been in business since 1935.  What we do is bring clean water, electricity, and rural telecommunications systems to rural communities.  And we have been doing that since the Depression. 

 

I'm just going to give you a little overview of my presentation. I'm going to tell you a little bit about what we do build the pipe out to rural America.  To make it possible to have distance education because a lot of people in this country now take it for granted, especially people my age, that that infrastructure will always be there.  And without programs like the RUS, they probably won't be.  

 

I need to tell you a little bit about distance learning resources.  We are very involved in distance learning and tele-healh at RUS we pretty much the spokesperson in the federal government for rural telecommunications for the customer's interest.  So, we are very involved with several different agencies that have some really good distance learning resource.

 

I'm going to give you a little history about where we come from, who we are.  We were started 1935 under the leadership of President Roosevelt.  In the early thirties, approximately 90 percent of all urban America had electric power.  Only 10 percent of rural Americans did.  So, under the leadership of President Roosevelt, the REA was started.  Electric power started coming to rural America and then in 1949, President Roosevelt gave the authority to make loans for telephones, telephone systems.  And the way we do that, is working with cooperatives, making loans, making a portable loan.  And then through a series of organization, reorganization, and Acts of Congress, we were able to expand our mission into distance learning and tele-medicine grants.  And then we were given the water program and they thought, you know, we do a lot more than electricity, let's change the name, hence, the Rural Utility Service, and nobody knows who we are anymore. So, I always feel like I have to share that with you.

 

I'm going to tell you a little about our infrastructure program.  And we are going to have folks here, actually Sheldon Boney in the back of the room here will be here latter in the week to answer technical questions about what we do.  Like I said that we loan to coops to provide telecommunications systems to rural areas, areas that are not served by the large telecommunications companies.  And we have a series of different infrastructure loans.  We have loans for hardship, treasury rate cost of money loans.  We have an organization called World Telephone Bank which makes loans and we also have guaranteed loans.  And this is the system through which probably most of rural America got telephone service.

 

We have at RUS a 1.5 million dollar learning distance program.  We make grants and 150 million dollars in loans for distance learning and tele-health and distance learning purposes.  We actually provide the end user equipment and things like computers, things like that, because we want the community's support, sustainability.  We want this program to be sustainable and so we don't pay for the connectivity.  It's a very small program, but it does a lot of good and it shows what you can do with a small amount of money.

 

The criteria we use for awarding grants and loans is based on need, the virility, the ability to leverage resources.  It's like Barbara said, that without partners, you really can't keep these things going and so we encourage our grantees to reach out to the community and really make this a community resource.  And that is what we see, probably the most successful grants are those that have a lot of input from the community.  The ones that look toward all the applications.  We have a hospital in North Dakota that it was going to be used for just a nursing home, they are turning this into a community-wide resource and it is really making a difference there.  One thing I would encourage you to do when you think about distance education is don't just think of the children.  Think of all the needs of your community and this is one of our grantees that did that.  This is actually a tele-health grantee.  But one of the great things about it is that they're using their money to provide resources to continue doctor's medical education. And in rural areas, that's a tremendous challenge for a doctor, especially if he is the single doctor is an area because he can't leave to go see the latest technology or learn to do a new procedure while he can use or she can use the tele-health system to continue the medical education.

 

We encourage people to build consortia, to share resources, to reach out to one another and this is actually a project that we financed in Texas.  And eight school districts came together and put in a network by which they could link up to one another.  They share teachers.  They're teaching classes that might not have been available otherwise, especially advanced classes like Trig and Physics, things that people don't want to take but a few of us, I guess, like to abuse ourselves and take those kinds of things.  And this is what they are doing.  I mean, they are thinking about the future. They're  thinking about educating their children.  I mean some of the brightest minds in the world are in rural America.  And we have to make sure they have access to the best education.

 

This is actually another project, and I wanted to highlight this because a local phone company got involved.  And they helped build a network.  And when Barbara was talking about getting the Telco's involved, it's not always easy, but if you go to your phone company, say to them, this is a new resource.  You can build new business by helping us provide this to our children.  And when you put it in those terms, quite often you get the attention that they might not have shown you otherwise.  Hey folks your going to make money, your going to expand your business.  It is amazing how all their eyes light up, you know, it is just kinda of, all inspiring.

 

Umm, as Barbara said, President Clinton, Vice President Gore have just been wonderful in supporting distance education.  And we work so closely with other government agencies, including CSRES, that we have a lot access to a lot of information.  And one of the best is the Department of Education Office of Education Technology.  They have a great website.  You can go in there and your can access it.  They have equipment information.  It's amazing just how much these people have.  But one of their greatest things is their sight called FREE.  This is Federal Resources for Education.  And would encourage you all to look at it because they have lesson plans.  They have historical information.  They have technical information.  They have.  The EPA has a site on clean water.  There's a more information in here that I can possibly describe. But it doesn't matter where you live, you can always find something that will help your community grow.  It is a wonderful resource.

 

And I just wanted to show you this is what the FREE site looks like.  And ah, they update it frequently.  And there is always something new going on.  And this is, I pulled this down for you today also, just to show you all the different sites they have up.  One of them, one of the newest ones is, one June 5th, Rus the Surf'n Squirrel.  He is our furry new mascot at the RUS and he surfs the internet and teaches children safety tips, history, safety tips like what to do with electricity, who to respond to people on the telephone, how to safely use the internet, and things like that.  So we are really proud to contribute to the FREE site that way.

 

The Schools and Libraries Corporation is part of Universal Service.  In this country, subsidies, well not, yea, well subsidies have always been built into the telephone system, to the telephone payment system.  And in 1996, Congress mandated that part of the subsidies would go toward paying for discounts for schools and libraries.  It has come under a lot of attacks lately because people are, well people are describing it as a new tax.  It's not a new tax.  It's just taking part of the monies that had been used before for other things for schools and libraries.  But part of this attack will affect the subsidies that paid for rural areas to have affordable telecommunications, ah, bills, and we are kinda fighting out the battle.  Not only to save the E rate, but to save affordable rural telephone charges and it is a ongoing battle.  So we at RUS also fight those kind of battles to try to keep rural telephone services affordable.

 

The next source is the Department of Commerce, MTIA.  They are the telecommunications policy makers for the federal government.  And they have wonderful links and just loads of information about universal service in general about satellite technology, anything you can want to know about US telecommunications policy, these folks have.

 

And my last resources are the RUS, which is us. We have a website that you can go into.  We require our borrowers to have certain hardware, meet certain hardware thresholds and we have those thresholds on the website.  We have information on our DLT project.  We have links.  We have information about our electrical programs and our water programs.

 

And the last one is the Internet Content Conference. This is something that Vice President Gore and Secretary Daily of the Department of Commerce put together.  This is centered toward good internet content.  And like Sandy said, there is a lot of trash out there.  And so the Vice President and Secretary of Commerce came together at the University of Southern California and had this conference and highlighted good content.  Not just from the government, but from all over the world.  And it is really great.  It's a wonderful resource.  And they actually have audio and video downloads on there where you can actually see what happened at the conference. And then you can always call me.  I work for the Administrator of the RUS and the Undersecretary.  And I forgot my fax number, and I apologize for that.  But I am a Confidential Assistant to the Administrator and work on a broad range of issues from Universal Service to our DLT program.  My phone number is 202-690-6031.  And actually it is better to e-mail me that fax anyway, and it's ecjones@rus.usda.gov.  I hope that I have given you something that you can take away possibly use toward you own distance education at first.  Just remember, I mean, it's doable and it is an incredible resource and the difference we see in communities and people is just staggering.   And anytime we can help you just call on us.  I mean that's what we are here to do.  Me, Cheryl, Barbara, all of us, we want to make this work and help you do it.  Thank you.

 

(APPLAUSE)

 

And we will take questions now if you like.

 

Question:  (Inaudible)

 

Answer:   Umm, the Department of Education has a project called Goals 2000 and that is both urban and rural and the NTIA also has a program called TIA and that is both urban and rural.  TIA funding was just cut in half for the next year.  But, I would check their website periodically, their grant application deadline was March 15th, so they should be announcing (audience comments inaudible) right (audience comments inaudible).   They do kinda demonstration projects.  Our's is a one-shot project. (audience comments inaudible).  Goals 2000, (audience comments inaudible) our's is the DLT program where we fund end-user equipment. It's RUS.  Education, I'm not sure if Goals 2000 is a demonstration project.

 

Question:  (Inaudible)

 

Answer:  I know of a tele-health project that HUD helped finance.  I don't know if Education did.  I can find that out for you.

 

Question:  What are the things that ------------------- that some of the dollars were used to fund the programs.  To develop and design programs, other ----------------------equipment and hardware.  The infrastructure, the human part, is the hardest because we do not have funding for all, but you are saying more than that.  I think the Department of Education ----------------.  We have one very, very small grant for telecommunications.-----------  But the whole human structure program, we don't fund any hardware or software.  Those are things to look at when you go down the funding list.  Most of the universities or public schools should have one of those resource guides that gives you all the different kinds of funding agencies which can be searched by program, but needs, rather than by ---------.  There are a lot of them that won't have anything to do with funding hardware.  ----So that's something that ----------------.  I would check with your public school or if you have a college or an university nearby and their financial management office, grants and contracts they have as resource guides.  And they list all of the funding, funders, government, private, the whole thing.  But the best way to do it is to search it by the particular needs, whether its a program or infrastructure, however, that kind of thing.

 

I have been asked to repeat the question.  The question was:  What resources do we know for urban communities.  Also, the Department of Education, the Office of Education Technology is a wonderful resource.

 

Question:  (Inaudible)

 

Answer:  The FCC published an Order in May of last year and they changed it shortly thereafter.  I believe at that time it might have been 32 megabytes, and they lowered it six months later, and we oppose that.  And I don't think they made a determination yet, but I can find out for you. (Audience inaudible)  Sure, and if your would like a copy of the order I will be happy to see if I can get one for you.  OK.

 

Any other questions?

 

Question:  (Inaudible)

 

Answer:  The question was actually a comment on reversing the education and teaching folks in urban areas about rural communities.  Actually we've talked to, or I've talked to, there is a group called, Council for Greater City Schools, and they represent intercity schools.  And I have talked to them about possibly linking some of their schools up, even if it is just a day or so, with some of our grantees so that some of the kids in the urban areas can learn about rural areas and rural areas can learn what it is like to live in an urban area.

 

Audience:  The issue you should bring up too is we are seeing more and more, that it isn't an issue of urban and rural.  It is an issue of the kinds of problems we have ------------------welfare.  All of these issues, they may be different, at different levels, rural or not.  People hurt and are having a tough time no matter where they are.  I think we are finally start to know that we are never going to get out of it today.  We are really starting to look at how to solve social problems, or how do we look at issues, rather than passing them one to the other.  I think that is the most positive way.  That would be a very good way.

 

In the blue.  (Audience)

 

Question:  (Inaudible)

 

Answer:  I would love to talk to you later on it.  The question was about the assessment of distance education and connecting schools in Australia with small schools here in the US.  I need to say the questions for the translators.  Do you want to.

 

I apologize for not getting up here earlier because I didn't get it all.  Ah, the issue of assessment, the International Journal of Distance Education out of Penn State and the Journal of Distance Education, the American Journal of Distance Education, both have strong research bases in comparisons in looking at our traditional format, formal approach to teaching and instruction, and those options or approaches using the concept underlined, Distance Education.  And are not finding any difference in the motivation, looking at age, looking at the social descriptors, the individuals.  The difference is not coming from whether they received the education at a distance, it has to do with the other reasons.  Why are you there looking at demographics kinds of things.  I would be glad, if I can get you name when we are done, I would be glad to send you some information on that or help you get in contact with people to help you with that.

 

Any other questions:

 

Question:  (Inaudible)

 

Answer:  Where is the Australian booth.  (Laughter)

 

Any other questions:

 

Question:  (Inaudible)

 

Answer:  The question was:  What is the US position on preventing haves and have nots in information technology.  It's an ongoing debate here and the Vice President is very engaged in it.  And had taken a few hits lately because he is so engaged in it.  I mean, the telephone companies here are you know, are really going after us on Universal Service, and that's why he always says.  We don't want to be a nation of haves and have nots and he understands, you know, like Mrs. Gore says, he is from Carpage, Tennessee.  So he understands that the possibility is great that if we don't have Universal Service, people won't be able to even afford basic phone lines, let alone the internet.  And that's the wave of the future, that rural communities are going to be left out.  When I speak to people, and talk to them about Universal Service, I always point out to them that this is about sustainable economic development.  This is about rural communities being able to do business and without that connection, they won't be able to.  And it's a big battle right now because the telephone companies are so well funded.  So it's, you know, it's, I think in the end we will prevail, but, yea, maybe we can get together.  (Laughter)

 

Question:(Inaudible)

 

Answer:  The question is:  Do we have a problem of getting people to take up and getting people interested in using distance education technology.  My experience is that we get a lot of requests about our program from the schools.  We have 150 million dollars in loans.  The telephone companies can borrow that, the telephone and electric can borrow from that and provide these services to their schools.  They have been slow to do that and you really, my Deputy Administrator, Christopher McLean and I met with a group of telephone companies, rural telephone company executives and Chris was telling them that I've got the loans, why it's a good idea, and really, you had to get to them and say to them that this will expand your business.  Because if you put the lines in that are capable of providing the internet to the schools, you know, businesses are going to start getting online and it will evolve.  But in terms of parents, I haven't encountered a reluctance, but definitely from business we've seen some reluctance.

 

The other thing coming from an education background, is working with faculty, both at the University level and K through 12 and it goes back to that human capacity again.  It's a threat.  There is this idea that it is going to takeover everything and you will never need me again.  And I am being a little vicious but there are a lot of those feelings.  But the flip side of this, what we are after is sound education and there are going to be times when it may not be the best way to go using the application of technology.  It just may not.  And so one of the things that I worry about myself is that we get this idea that it is going to answer everything.  It is not a panache, what we are looking at is trying to reach more and more of the needs of the rural community and the urban communities, the culture, with as many of the options  as we can so that nobody goes without access.  But it doesn't always mean that it is going to be one way or the other.  A lot of faculty tell me, hey look, I don't get anything for it.  What's in it for me?  I'm scared.  I don't want to lose my job. Your going to  put me out of business.  I mean, you know, and if you stop and look at where they are, it is scary.

 

Question:  (Inaudible)

 

Answer:  Well, in our DLT program, when I put up the scoring side, it mentioned innovativeness.  And what I tell people, it is not necessarily the most expensive, the most high-tech thing, it hasn't been done in your community before.  And I think you are exactly right.  Sometimes the most innovative thing is right there in the middle.  It may not be the priciest or the biggest bang, but it works.

 

Question:  (Inaudible)

 

Answer:  The question was: how to get involved in putting together a telecommunications package for a remote area, specifically, Tasmania.