Thursday, August 5, 2010

The Heroes Among Us



 NetDay 96

These days it seems everyone I know has volunteered to be on school technology committee. As information age volunteers bring our schools into the twenty first century by connecting school to schools, schools to community, and schools to home, they are breaking down the walls that have existed between institutions.

One of my favorite examples for these "connected times" is the story of John Gage. As ex director of science for Sun Micro systems. Gage, who served on more than his share of federal advisory panels, was tired of sitting in meetings and hearing how impossible and expensive it would be to be wire all the schools in this century.

His response was to organize California's Net Day a volunteer effort of nearly 100,000 people that wired 12,000 schools in 24 hours. Net Day worked, and since that day in Marc 1996, Net Day has grown to encompass wiring initiatives in all 50 states.

Gage couldn't have organized Net Day without the Internet. Many have called it a high tech barn raising. Gage built a page on the internet so volunteers and sponsors could sign up, and he used the Net to distribute instructions for how to wire a school. Gage work is proof that parents, teachers, administrators, union workers, businesspeople, and legislators can work together in new ways to effect change.

Gage is one type of computer hero, but there are others. Software developers like Jan  Davidson & Associates have worked for decades to create software that helps children learn. Other pioneers are developing intriguing Web programming to broaden our children horizons see Kid Tested Web sites in this issue.
 

Elsewhere, classroom teachers like Joan McLain, Pamela Wild and Neil Eerdmans are taking heroic steps, too. With little formal training and limited but budgets, the are pioneering ways to incorporate the internet into their classroom curricula.


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2 comments:

Vista 84 on August 4, 2010 at 9:47 PM said...

Nice Post My Brother :D

aRya Bayu on August 4, 2010 at 11:18 PM said...

thank :D

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