U-Hi Getting Wired For Computer Future Teachers, Volunteers Hooking Up Network

Several students in Bob Bartlett’s biology class at University High School sat reading their books. Others watched a CD-ROM playing on a TV screen, talked back to it and held up notecards with answers to questions. The rest of the class watched a videotape.

Meanwhile, Bartlett sat in the back of the room, talking.

On many days, a small group of students will also participate in labs with Bartlett’s help. Other students will sit in front of the 12 computers lining the rear of the classroom, where they learn about everything from sewage to ecology.

It sounds like chaos in the classroom. To Bartlett and others, it’s the teaching wave of the future. Computers are on the front line.

“Compared to sitting for an hour of me talking, this doesn’t come close,” said Bartlett, who uses lectures to pull together his multimedia approach. “They like it better. They like being on computers better. They like CD-ROM better.”

University High School staff members are now trying to ensure that the school doesn’t become roadkill on the information highway. They want to put students on the Internet.

Every classroom in the building already has at least one computer, and faculty members are working to network these computers together.

The school first plans to connect the computers in each department. The next step will connect these department loops together into a node. This node will be connected to the Washington Education Network, and then to the Internet.

“Ultimately the library will become the center of technology,” Principal Dennis Hill said. “Hopefully, kids will be able to access through the library, the Library of Congress.”

The Internet is a fast-growing, often user-unfriendly network of computers linking universities, companies, government agencies and computer users worldwide. People can learn about federal law on the Internet. They can learn the latest research on quarks from the University of Edinborough. They can join bulletin boards on every subject from acne problems to cat haters.

“Internet would probably be the best-spent money for the district out of all the options available,” Bartlett said.

But the district doesn’t have a lot of money to spend networking the classrooms. Teachers and volunteers will spend weekends crawling around the bowels of the school, trying to push and pull cable computer wire between classrooms. Hill said the school hopes to finish networking about 50 classrooms by the summer.

Bartlett is excited about the new computer possibilities for his class.

“I’m not sure, to tell the truth, all they’ll be able to do,” he said. “Literature on DNA sequencing, things that change rapidly, they’ll be able to see from this room. They’ll be able to communicate with other experts in the field.”

Students aren’t used to learning about changes that quickly.

The information in textbooks traditionally is three years old when students first receive the books, and textbooks are often used for five years, Bartlett said.

Textbooks should be just one tool that students can use, he added. Computers form the crux of another.

Central Valley School District Superintendent Dick Sovde said schools need to prepare students for the technology of tomorrow.

“One of the most important things we can teach kids today is how to access information,” Sovde said. “There is so much knowledge being generated by many, many scholarly people throughout the nation.”

University High sophomores Pat Orthouse and Steve Goforth, both 16, said they liked what they already could do with computers.

“They can be fun - not always,” Goforth said. “But it’s a lot better than writing stuff.”

Neither has yet logged onto the Internet. But both said they were excited about the possibilities of researching information from around the world while sitting in their biology classroom.

“That’d be cool,” Orthouse said.