Broadband. If you have it, you can't live without this faster connection. If you don't have it, you just accept it, or like many, tend to find yourself using it more than you should at work or at your local coffee shop (shameless plug for 2 of our sponsors the Dock Coffee and the Potter's Shed) sipping ever-so-slowly on your house brew while you take advantage of their free Wi-Fi broadband connection.
Broadband has become essential for many, including 'anchor' institutions (County, City, and Hospitals) as well as for schools and businesses. But there are those that still do not have access to broadband, specifically those in rural communities, such as ours.
The FCC, which defines broadband as a minimum internet download speed of 25Mbps and upload speed of 3Mbps, in a 2016 Broadband Progress Report found that:
- 39% of rural Americans (23 million people) lack access to 25Mbps/3Mbps.
- By contrast, only 4 percent of urban Americans lack access to 25Mbps/3Mbps.
The availability of fixed terrestrial services in rural America continues to lag behind urban America at all speeds:
- 20% lack access even to service at 4Mbps/1Mbps down only 1% from 2011, and
- 31% lack access to 10Mbps/1Mbps, down only 4% from 2011.
These statistics are not lost on many of our community members, including the Spooner Area School District Superintendent John Burnett, who stated, "When the FCC suggested that only 1 out of 3 individuals in many parts of this country have access to broadband, the topic mirrors the efforts that went into the electrification of rural America years ago."
Flashback to the mid-30's when although nearly 90% of urban citizens had electricity, only about 10% of rural citizens did. It was President Franklin D. Roosevelt who signed an executive order to create the Rural Electrification Administration (REA). This led to The Rural Electrification Act of 1936, which provided federal loans for the installation of electrical distribution systems to serve rural areas in the U.S. Roosevelt believed that if private enterprise could not supply electric power to the people, then it was the duty of the government to do so.
"The Rural Electrification Program was one of the greatest successes in government technology programs of all time, and the electrification of rural America is considered one of the biggest engineering triumphs of the last hundred years," said Agriculture Undersecretary for Rural Development, Dallas Tonsager, in a 2010 statement celebrating the 75th anniversary of the program.
Fast-forward to present day when recently, Gov. Walker announced that he called on the Wisconsin State Legislature to pass a proposed bill that appropriates an additional estimated $35.5 million for broadband expansion and technology programs, such as the Broadband Expansion Grant Program and the Technology for Educational Achievement (TEACH) program, over the next three fiscal years.
The Public Service Commission also announced they will increase funding up to $46 million for rural energy programs that expand broadband in communities. The plan allocates up to $26 million in rural programs that combine broadband and energy efficiency.
Superintendent Burnett supports these efforts to provide more access to the community for broadband and also believes there could be a significant impact on students who learn at home as well.
"Obviously anything that can help the residents [in] rural areas gain better access to the technology that is typically available for the residents of urban areas is something that I would support, Superintendent Burnett said. “In addition, it is important to remind our citizens that we are thankful for their support of the technology that they have provided for the students in the Spooner Area School District. However, when many of these students get on the bus and return to their homes the laptops they are able to use for their studies in school, become ineffective for homework because of the lack of broadband connectivity."
Hugh Miller, District Technology Coordinator for the SASD, is another that finds parallels between rural access to broadband and the electrification of rural communities in the 30's, and he has been on the forefront of broadband and an advocate for its need.
"Educational Technology used within the SASD is an integral component to achieving improvements in student achievement and ensuring students have skills necessary to succeed as digital citizens in the 21century", Mr. Miller said.
Miller said that SASD is using "a wide range of educational technologies that are incorporated into classrooms and learning areas ranging from computers and projectors to 3D printers, mobile devices, and virtual desktop workstations. Use of these technology tools provides opportunities for staff to create blended learning and personalized learning environments for students while improving employee productivity and district communication with parents and community."
Currently, the SASD has a broadband speed of around 1Gbps that allows the things Mr. Miller stated to be used/accomplished in the district.
But if the school has the access and teachers can utilize it in their classrooms, why the need for funding and grants to bring that same access to homes where it is not currently available? What is the real-life application vis-a-vis student education outside of the classroom if broadband was available to students at home?
According to two Spooner teachers with whom we recently communicated, one way could be what is called 'flipping a classroom'.
Flipping, or inverting, a classroom means that "students could pre-learn material at home and when they return to school the next day, we could jump right to discussions and hands-on learning time because they already were taught before they came to class," said Tammy Ackerson, 7th Grade Teacher & Student Council Advisor at the Spooner Middle School (SMS).
Mrs. Ackerson said they have a lot of "great kids in our community," but the lack of broadband access in student's homes is limiting the ways they can learn.
"Many students want to make their work better but have to use class time wisely sometimes rushing through to complete assignments. The reason for this is they are limited to using the Internet here only to complete their work," stated Ackerson.
Ryan Smith, 6th Grade teacher at the SMS expands on this idea of 'flipping' or 'inverting' a classroom.
"Currently, we teach new content in the day when we are with students and then send them home with practice. Once home, hours later, they may need help. Often, with nobody able to help them, evening homework time becomes counterproductive.
Smith believes this is why teachers assigning homework is not quite the norm as in years past.
"Many teachers, schools, and entire districts across the country have given up on homework for this reason. With the flipped classroom, students watch the lesson (and explore related materials) in the evening at home. When they return to school the next day, they do what we used to consider homework, but now they have the teacher available to help coach them through the practice and to provide additional support. In addition, there are no heavy materials to lug around and possibly lose," Smith said. He also believes that parents with broadband could benefit from this.
"Communication between the school and home will also improve. Parents often feel left in the dark about what is happening in school. With online classrooms, parents can have access to daily assignment postings, lesson content itself, and an efficient way to touch base with teachers. Many parents want to be able to help their children. With access to the instructional videos and materials, they will have an easier time keeping up with student content. Face to face conferences can also be conducted online."
As exciting and promising as all of these ideas are, it is all still hypothetical as it is dependent on the homes of the students to 1) have access to the broadband, and 2) families paying for it.
"Right now, I don't think that things would change much", Spooner's 8th Grade Science and Careers teacher, Tony Bell said when asked what would change if he knew students had access to broadband at home. "It would be great if everyone had it, not just some."
Bell continued to say that even he doesn't have access to broadband, and he only lives a few miles away from the school. "I don't have access to my house and I only live 6 miles west of the high school. My own kids (students in SASD) would love if we had access as there are constantly things that they are asked to do online outside of the classroom."
Miller can also appreciate the need for students and teachers outside of the school district to have broadband access but notes that the work that the SASD has already done has set the groundwork for the future.
"For broadband access outside for the District, SASD partnered with other 'anchor' institutions to build a Community Area Network (CAN). The Spooner 'CAN' has collaborated with other community 'CAN's in the Chippewa Valley securing grant funding to build a fiber network providing connectivity each institution needs but could not achieve on their own.
"Moving forward, a significant challenge for the District will be to address the lack of adequate, affordable residential broadband choices available to staff and students in rural areas of the District. That is ensuring students and their families have access to broadband connections fast enough to allow learning anytime anywhere outside the school walls. A step toward accomplishing this will be working with members of the Spooner CAN, local and state economic development agencies and private industry to secure funding through grants and other sources to provide solutions to meet residential broadband needs in our community."
So what are some of the solutions to this issue? How can we get broadband access into the homes of students in our community? Miller thinks one possibility would be for the school district to allow students access to their broadband if a wireless network was created in the community.
"Technical solutions to meet this need are many and varied. From a District perspective, a possible solution might be network collaboration with private sector to build an LTE or WiMAX Type wireless network across the district,” Miller said “In this model, a private sector vendor would manage a network selling residential broadband services to consumers while the District could use the same network to provide broadband access for school use to economically disadvantaged students. In this model, the school could manage student access to appropriate online resources outside the district because they cannot afford or do not have access to broadband. The same model also has the potential for promoting economic growth in the community. Recent studies conducted by UW extension conclude affordable access to broadband has a direct correlation to economic growth."
The parallel between the Rural Broadband Expansion effort of today and the Electrification of rural America is also championed in a report called Commonalities: The R.E.A. and High-Speed Rural Internet Access by Laurence J. Malone Economics Department at the Hartwick College Oneonta; Malone believes that:
"Lacking a high-speed rural Internet infrastructure, the consequences to the nation as a whole will increasingly mirror the plight of rural Americans without electricity in the decades prior to the Great Depression. The question is no longer whether to maintain the status quo in the market for broadband Internet access since the digital divide worsens the status quo by the day.
If sparsely populated regions continue to lag in high-speed Internet access, we tacitly accept diminished rural productivity, less substantial rural demands for commodities and services, lagging rural incomes, and widening income inequality.
Those who choose to live in rural America for its environmental attractiveness, low crime, family-centered lifestyle and democratic educational institutions will be comparatively disadvantaged over the next decades.
When a federal effort to create incentives to invest in rural Internet infrastructure requires marginal investments that will eventually be repaid, and when a satisfactory formula to distribute those incentives to private sector investments can be devised, the absence of policy- making action to actively promote universal access is no longer justifiable.”
Perhaps SMS teacher Smith said it best;
"Education is changing. Programs are being individualized to meet diverse student needs. In the future, families will be choosing from menus rather than dropping students off for a one size fits all education. Current Wisconsin law allows for home and virtual schooled students to attend public school for two classes a day and to participate in sports. As we move forward, we are likely to see more students adopt this mixed format of schooling, especially as the state and federal government move further in the direction of vouchers.”
Smith said, “Blurring the lines between the physical and digital classroom will allow students to work at their own pace. No longer should a 6th-grade student capable of ninth grade math be forced to wait years to access that content. Mixed schooling will alter everything from building needs to transportation and beyond. The state of education is changing, and high-speed internet will allow our local schools, our community, and our students to be competitive."
"Kids are the future," said Tammy Ackerson, SMS, "let's give them every opportunity to shine and make the world a better place!"
[Note: Special thanks to the Spooner Area School District administrators and teachers for their opinions.]
Last Update: Dec 19, 2016 4:25 pm CST
