   Changing our World Using Computers:


                             Compuhigh

                  Copyright 1995 by Stanley Kanner

 Education and the Internet!  Schools for the 21st century..

 While rushing about to out do one another, these are buzz words we've
 heard from almost every Board of Education throughout the country. The
 acquisition of technology! But what is really going on? Does the rhetoric
 match behavior and, in fact, how much is the Internet really being used
 in grades K-12? Unfortunately, not much!

 Many school systems have Internet access - but few teachers use it! There
 are isolated school districts which do have some projects going on, but,
 for the most part, these are for small groups of students, and are
 largely experimental.

 Given the above, we decided to go for broke. Why fiddle around with
 little projects when it's possible to create an entire high school on the
 Internet. That means courses, teachers, high school diplomas, - all of it
 and we did!

 In North America, there are over one million homeschoolers. These
 students are perfect for an Internet high school. They need a way to take
 courses they can't get at home, a way to interact with teachers and other
 students, and to be able to socialize and not feel isolated.

 We entered into a partnership with The Clonlara School in Ann Arbor,
 Michigan. The Clonlara School is an alternative school that has a program
 set up for homeschoolers to work independently and still obtain a regular
 high school diploma. This was how the Clonlara School Compuhigh was born.

 The next step was to look at different commercial networks and select one
 to be our online site. We decided to go with Delphi... the smallest of
 the large! They gave us the access and flexibility we wanted, and were
 much looser and less suit and tie.

 Converting seven Delphi forums into a main school lobby and classrooms,
 we set up six basic courses that we felt homeschoolers would have a hard
 time getting independently and would be interesting for homeschoolers to
 take. We started out with English (writing), Algebra, Earth Science,
 World Geography, Small Business development, and American Government.
 This year we have dropped Small Business, and added Algebra II, Geometry
 and Physics.

 The classrooms themselves are not done in real time. Our thinking is that
 real time sessions are expensive, and take away the time flexibility of
 both the student and teacher. The forums themselves are set up as
 classrooms with postings acting as blackboards, lecture podium, and for
 the student, questions and discussion forums. We also rely heavily on
 email between students and teachers.

 We use a very good Bot program called "Dlite" which was developed
 specifically for the Delphi network. The Bot enables the student to have
 a parallel Compuhigh off-line, and lets the students do all their work
 without the meter ticking on the commercial network. In fact the average
 online session only lasts about two minutes. This fits in very nicely
 with Delphi's five hours for ten dollars price scale. It also allows the
 student free time to do research and explore the Internet.

 In future columns, you will hear more about some of the international
 directions we are taking, and other computer related educational issues
 on and off the Internet. This quick sketch of the Compuhigh project is a
 bare bones outline which we'll flesh out as our column develops.

 Please feel free to direct any questions about Compuhigh to;
 Stankan@mail.netvision.net.il

 Editorial Note: Computers are not yet in the appliance category that Herb
 Chong and I discussed several years ago, - even though they are rapidly
 becoming cheap and very obtainable. In some school districts the desk top
 computer is neither widely available or widely used by individual
 children. Many parents are very dissatisfied that their children are not
 being better prepared in either the basics or the electronic world where
 they will be expected to compete. As a result they have withdrawn their
 children from the public school systems. There are many lessons to be
 learned from the homeschoolers, parents and teachers, and the online
 mentors! It is to that end that we welcome Stan to the WindoWatch list of
 regular contributors. lbl
