
When the state shifted to e-learning, a rural school shifted to the copy machine - danso
https://www.propublica.org/article/coronavirus-schools-illinois-trico-district-176-superintendent-larry-lovel
======
gumby
This article is an eye opening read. They didn’t choose paper because they
were old fashioned but because their students all lived in an area without
internet or any retail infrastructure. They also distributed corona virus info
because the parents were (naturally) in the same boat.

I might have expected such a thing deep in the Australian bush or in rural
parts of west Africa but not close to major urbanization’s like Chicago or St
Louis.

~~~
tomatotomato37
Does bring up the question if it makes sense to practice convnetional social
distancing for a place where everyone is already lives so physcially apart
that it's a pain in the ass to provide them with modern infrastructure; you'd
think the curve would already be flat enough for them that whatever urban
hospital services the area could handle it.

To put the density in perspective the entire population of 500 sq mi Coles
County is 2k less than the population of all 2 sq mi of Uptown Chicago

~~~
spaced-out
How much does population density matter if kids are still spending 8+ hours in
the same room at school, and parents are touching the same surfaces at work?

~~~
tomatotomato37
The jobs that a low population density supports generally don't have a lot of
workers touching the same thing; only so many people are going to be using a
tractor or mining excavator in the span of a month. That only leaves schools
as a large potential infection vector, which considering the average age &
thus risk group of parents with kids still in primary school will leave the
situation a lot more manageable

~~~
spaced-out
>The jobs that a low population density supports generally don't have a lot of
workers touching the same thing

They have a separate bathroom for every employee? People on worksites never
share tools?

------
Glyptodon
Even in urban districts getting all students online is a huge undertaking.
Watched part of a school board meeting a couple days ago and the local
district was planning on buying 10k-ish Chromebooks and getting 3 months of
internet service donated by the cable company to cover the portion of families
without computers+internet at home.

My grandmother lives in a rural area and it's economically collapsed (30%
poverty rate), with no realistic way to get everyone internet access, so doing
something more old fashioned will probably be necessary.

What I think is sad is that stopping school for two months as a replacement
for summer break and then finishing the school year and immediately starting
the next without a break _should_ be the simplest thing to do. But nobody can
do it for a bunch of reasons that are more pathetic than compelling.

~~~
tssva
One good reason not to stop schools for two months as a replacement for summer
break is that currently it is very uncertain that circumstances in the summer
or at the beginning of the next school year will be anymore conducive to kids
being in schools than they are now. Seems it would be much better to develop,
trial and refine based upon real world experience remote teaching practices
during the remainder of the school year and be in a much better position for
the following school year if we are still dealing with this virus. Especially
given that many experts seem to think there will be waves of easing and
reimposing of restrictions until a vaccine is found.

~~~
Glyptodon
At the very least obtaining and imaging all the Chromebooks and lining up all
the tech looks set to delay implementation anyway. I guess the way I see it,
making summer break early also means they could be more reasonably prepared
for the whole remote learning thing.

------
dugmartin
I grew up in Southern Illinois near this school district and now live in
Western Mass in a school district facing the same problem. We are the largest
district geographically in the state and have lots of rural students with no
access to the Internet. My wife is an elementary school reading specialist and
can’t get in contact with many of her kids. The number one concern for the
state Ed leaders is “equity” which for now, while the schools are physically
closed, means no online education for anyone in our district.

~~~
sethammons
We are also very rural with many families with no internet. Instead of
eLearning, we have printed packets available for pickup at the front office.
For those with internet, the same packets are available online.

~~~
dorchadas
Same. We had to hand out our first packet to students the last day we were in
class (had less than 24 hours to make them, it's a minor miracle our
notoriously broken copier didn't break), and then we had to put our next two
weeks online, so that the principle could print out copies to have available
while they're working at the school still.

------
jessaustin
The Daughters Bell have failed rural America. It's decades past time when FCC
should stop holding back progress in these areas by doing the bidding of
ATT/VZN. We are not served by spectrum monopoly regulatory regimes.

~~~
perl4ever
I think the vast majority of areas "without internet access" are an artifact
of modern software.

I recently went over my "unlimited" cellular quota and was throttled to
128Kbps. I was amazed that I could literally not load the web page to upgrade
my plan! 128K _used to be high speed internet_.

Trying to upgrade everyone so they can pipe the same amount of garbage as
everyone else seems like it will always be a receding goal.

How about pass laws that say, not only must sites be accessible to the
disabled, but they must also be accessible on low bandwidth connections?

~~~
morpheuskafka
Sure, you just tell Zoom to make a video conference with 40 people in a class
work over a 128K connection.

~~~
perl4ever
What if you haven't _got_ 40 people? There are towns I've been to with an
entire population barely larger. They need fiber?

Also, I just don't take seriously the difference between being connected to
the internet and high quality videoconferencing for people who are extremely
isolated. It's being connected at all that matters. You may be video
conferencing lately, but I haven't even bothered to webex, just conference
calls. And I don't myself see the worth compared to instant messaging.

------
HenryBemis
Article points to twitter post:
[https://twitter.com/LDLOVEL/status/1239368178435833856](https://twitter.com/LDLOVEL/status/1239368178435833856)

------
BookFusionHQ
This is the same situation in the Caribbean and other areas that BookFusion
was also built to address.

We allow schools and districts to launch their digital initiatives by allowing
them to launch their private digital library and give options to distribute
and give access to content for students and teachers both offline and online.

Students would be able to read and complete activities while offline which is
later synced backed to the platform when internet connectivity returns.

[https://www.bookfusion.com/education](https://www.bookfusion.com/education)

Please send us an email at education@bookfusion.com if you know a school in a
similar situation that could benefit from complimentary access to a platform
like ours.

------
madengr
Copy machines were too expensive to use for school work. I remember some
machine that used a hand powered roller to spit out copies in a pale, blue
ink. This was late 70’s/80’s.

~~~
Spooky23
Mimeograph.

~~~
Mountain_Skies
Yep. I was impressed when our school bought its first electric mimeograph.
Until then, they were hand cranked. If you were one of the well behaved
students and arrived early enough, a teacher sometimes would let you go with
her to the office to crank the machine to produce that day's worksheets.

------
karatestomp
The teacher my 1st grader has 4 days a week printed and organized packets
ahead of time, and is using the digital tools to provide instructions on what
to do with the paper. The one-day-a-week teacher is all digital. The tech-
support pain, missing shit, links to the wrong things, and so on this first
week have been 4:1 the other way. Paper doesn’t get janky or not work or
change out from under you.

