presented by:
	Janet Poley President, ADEC Distance Education Consortium
	Ray Kimsey NCSU
	Dan Cotton CIT, UNL

1. Reaching Rural/Remote Americans

2. Distance Education
   • Taking the university to the people?
   • Taking the university to the wealthy?
   • Taking the university to the urban?
   • Taking the university to the educated?
   • Taking the university to:
     • D.C., Silicon Valley, Austin, Seattle, SLC

3. The Digital Divide
   • Falling through the Net
   • Have Nots are Growing Over time

4. Heterick Comments on DD
   • "We should worry about the unhappily slow roll-out and high cost of high speed digital connectivity. To produce really compelling learning applications, we will most often require megabit access."

5. The Real Digital Divide
   • "At the current roll-out rate of our phone companies' digital subscriber line technology and the cable companies' symmetrical broadband services, we will severely limited in what we can design in the way of new learning environments for quite some time to come."

6. ADEC Vision: No More Back Roads
   • Reach into communities less than 25,000
   • HBCUs, Tribal Colleges, Hispanic serving
   • Developing countries

7. Who Do Most of Underserved Schemes Really Serve?
   • Not the "distant"
   • Not the place bound
   • Not the less educated
   • Not the educators
   • Not the national interest
   • Not universal in service

8. Pretty Good Internet
   • DSL
   • Satellite Wireless
   • LMDS
   • Radio wireless
   • Protocols

9. Improving Access and Applications
   • Bandwidth offers "realism" with instructional potential for more concrete and conplex symbols and visuals
   • Bandwidth offers "voice" and affect
   • Two-way offers active engagement and adaptation to learners
   • Synchronous offers immediacy and responsiveness

10. Reaching Rural/Remote Americans: The North Carolina Case

11. NC Statistics
    • 100 counties
    • Land mass of 48,843 miles
    • Current population of 7.7 million
    • The counties within the Piedmont have the highest population and the families in these counties typically have the highest incomes.

12. NC State's remote sites
    • 15 Research centers
    • 5 4-H camps
    • 101 County centers (1 on the Cherokee Reservation)

13. Income by county
    • Highest areas of population are in the Piedmont.
    • Some of the eastern and western counties have the highest percentage of poverty.

14. Barriers to providing network services to the remote areas
    • Higher expenses to provide services
    • A larger percentage of low income families that may have lower usage rates
    • Less exposure to the Internet in schools and work

15. The NC Information Highway
    • Shared network resource for all state and local government agencies
    • Encourage state agencies to pursue use of electronic communications
    • Equalized rates - regardless of location

16. Use of the NCIH to reach our remote centers
    • T1 lines into 2 of our R/E centers that allows for H.320 video services - $2,244 per month per site
    • 56K leased data lines into 101 centers - $550 per month per site

17. Current data needs exceed our financial ability
    • Early assumptions of cost reductions for networks access fees have not been realized.
    • Current needs:
      • T1 lines into all our centers
      • 1 way video and 2 way audio into at least 7 regional centers

18. What are we doing?
    • Partnering with other local government agencies to share data networks when we can.
    • Partnering with schools and community colleges to share video centers.

19. We are also looking for faster, cheaper solutions.
    • Options such as the one developed by Tachyon.Net may provide a solution for reaching our most remote centers.
    • Our complete answer will most likely be a combination of solutions.

Click here for the Slide Presentation.