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In Internet Dead Zones, Rural Schools Struggle With Distanced Learning (npr.org) 110

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: The past seven months have been a big strain on families like Mandi Boren's. The Borens are cattle ranchers on a remote slice of land near Idaho's Owyhee Mountains. They have four kids -- ranging from a first grader to a sophomore in high school. When the lockdown first hit, Boren first thought it might be a good thing. Home schooling temporarily could be more efficient, plus there'd be more family time and help with the chores. "I thought, I'll be able to get my kids' schooling done in a few hours and then they'll be to work with dad, and no problem it will be great," Boren says, chuckling. "Well, it didn't turn out so great." That's because all four kids -- in addition to Boren, who telecommutes -- were suddenly plugged into the family's satellite Internet, which is spotty on a good day. You can forget trying to use Zoom or Google Classroom. "I soon found out that our Internet speeds were so slow, we had to spread it out all week long actually," Boren says. "We were doing schooling on Saturdays and Sundays as well." Her kids started back to school in person, at least for now.

Across the country as American schools struggle with whether to reopen or stay virtual, many rural districts are worried their students will fall even further behind than their city peers. This pandemic has shone a glaring light on a lot of inequalities. The federal government estimates that more than a third of rural America has little or no Internet. In numerous recent interviews, educators have told NPR they're concerned the rural-urban divide will only worsen if kids can't get online to learn. This past spring, when the lockdowns began, many rural districts amid the crisis had to resort to delivering paper copies of school work to students who didn't have Internet or cell phone service at home. "I don't know why anybody would rationally think 'we can just hand you a packet, and here you're going to go teach yourself,' that's basically what was going on," says Dr. Leslie Molina, principal at McDermitt Combined Schools in northern Nevada. She says all 105 of her students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Most live on the Fort McDermitt Reservation and about 75% have no Internet access at home.
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In Internet Dead Zones, Rural Schools Struggle With Distanced Learning More

In Internet Dead Zones, Rural Schools Struggle With Distanced Learning

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  • "I don't know why anybody would rationally think 'we can just hand you a packet, and here you're going to go teach yourself,' that's basically what was going on," says Dr. Leslie Molina, principal at McDermitt Combined Schools in northern Nevada. She says all 105 of her students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Most live on the Fort McDermitt Reservation and about 75% have no Internet access at home.

    One hundred and five students in her district? WTF? Why not have teachers drive from house to house? Teachers and kids could talk on porches/outside and give children one-on-one education.

    How many teachers does this school have? Most likely a dozen, so why not have the teachers visit the students?

    • Re: (Score:1, Redundant)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      Sorry, dropped an HTML tag it seems:

      "I don't know why anybody would rationally think 'we can just hand you a packet, and here you're going to go teach yourself,' that's basically what was going on," says Dr. Leslie Molina, principal at McDermitt Combined Schools in northern Nevada. She says all 105 of her students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Most live on the Fort McDermitt Reservation and about 75% have no Internet access at home.

      One hundred and five students in her district? WTF? Why not have teachers drive from house to house? Teachers and kids could talk on porches/outside and give children one-on-one education.

      How many teachers does this school have? Most likely a dozen, so why not have the teachers visit the students?

      • Re:News flash! Rural life is different from city l (Score:4, Insightful)

        by chiefcrash ( 1315009 ) on Monday September 28, 2020 @09:50AM (#60550388)

        How many teachers does this school have? Most likely a dozen, so why not have the teachers visit the students?

        It's usually not a question of how many teachers, but what kind of teachers. It's a combined school, so they're going to have everything from kindergarten to high school there. There might be a dozen teachers, but those dozen are necessarily qualified to teach everyone. How good of a job teaching a grader to read is a high school science teacher expected to provide? Is a 1st grade general-purpose teacher qualified to teach calculus?

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by kenh ( 9056 )

          Let's say there's 8 teachers, then ideally, ignoring all qualifications and special circumstances, that works out to about 12 or 13 kids/teacher. Cant a teacher visit 12 or 13 kids/week? They all live geographically close, so a teacher should be able to visit and help 5 students/day, and see every student twice/week.

          We're not talking about a suburban high school where each teacher sees 30 kids over 6 periods in a day for thei one subject.

          If they offer calculus, they have a teacher that's qualified to teach

          • Re:News flash! Rural life is different from city l (Score:5, Insightful)

            by JeffOwl ( 2858633 ) on Monday September 28, 2020 @11:33AM (#60550784)
            Do they really live "geographically close?" Don't know if you've ever been to Northern Nevada, but it is very sparsely populated. I don't know about 5 stops per day. Then you need to add compensation for the teacher's personal vehicle mileage. Not to mention the Northern tier of Nevada can get sketchy weather, so there may be weeks at a time where it won't make sense to try to get someone to do that much driving in a week. Then, if you have the teacher visiting each family in their home, one after another, are you really preventing the spread? If you are going to do that, it doesn't seem like a stretch to just bring the kids back to school with a staggered schedule of some sort. Another option is hiring teaching assistants to cover some of the families. Especially the younger kids, where the subjects won't require someone with specialized knowledge.
            • it also might not be safe for a teacher to go house to house in some areas. if i was a teacher and my job description was to go to a school and teach x for y hours, and suddenly i was asked to go for 1:1 time in private houses in remote areas, unless i knew the students and their families well and they were all good people and i got sufficient compensation for travel and vehicle i'd say no.

    • Why not have teachers drive from house to house? Teachers and kids could talk on porches/outside and give children one-on-one education.

      Let's simplify the numbers and assume they have a really great student-teacher ratio, and say there's 5 teachers for 100 students. There simply isn't enough time to have a single person travel to 20 homes and give someone a meaningful lesson. So either everyone only gets a tiny slice of instruction, or you pick who gets instruction and who doesn't...

      So how do you pick who gets an education and who has to fend for themselves?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kenh ( 9056 )

        The alternative is a pile of worksheets.

        Internet instruction isn't an option for 75% of students, and that won't change anytime soon, they need an outside-the-box alternative, these teachers teach multiple subjects, and there are likely 2 or three students in some houses. Imagine how much better their experience would be if a teacher came by and sat with the family for 2-3 hours, helping all their children, then a few days later, another teacher stops by again for a couple hours.

        We're talking tutoring, not

    • News flash! Cities have internet dead zones too, if you don't have a lot of money and no one cares about your neighborhood. Seriously, some high school kids will be siting in the car in the school parking lot to pick up the school's wifi.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by kenh ( 9056 )

        That's good. That's solving the problem, not sitting around acting hopeless.

      • Sure, all the schools around here have deployed WiFi access points to their parking lots. Same with libraries. If they want to stand up a local server (in case the school's internet isn't that great either) at the rural schools and an access point, you can drive over, get all your stuff in a matter of minutes, and go back home.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by anegg ( 1390659 )

        I live in a small but reasonably well-connected (Internet-wise) community. When the COVID crap hit the fan, our school district did exactly what is questioned in the article: "I don't know why anybody would rationally think 'we can just hand you a packet, and here you're going to go teach yourself,' that's basically what was going on,"

        Our school district did essentially just what was described as "handing out packets of work", but they did it over the Internet. Having a better capacity Internet would onl

        • Technology in general is frought with problems until people really figure it how to use it. Remember when electronic voting was supposed to fix the hanging chad problem and then introduced more problems than it fixed? And for a while at work our "electronic" forms were a lot more work than the paper way. So, yeah, just because you're zooming doesn't mean you're learning.

    • Re:News flash! Rural life is different from city l (Score:5, Interesting)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Monday September 28, 2020 @09:56AM (#60550414) Journal

      When each student is 20min drive apart (maybe because 10min of is spent bouncing down a dirt road at 10mph), that can still take a heck of a lot of time, assuming teachers spend any amount of time at all onsite. Also they did not sign up to be postal workers. If it turns out that is what teaching in rural district requires you to be and they don't like fine, they can quit and I am sure someone who does not mind those job activities can be found but short terms its problem that needs solving.

      What I don't understand is why homeschooling requires internet access. Its not new, people have been doing fairly regulated approved "home schooling" for decades prior to public internet access. I don't think "home schooling" in the traditional sense, parents/guardians purchase study and curriculum materials, use those to educate their children at home, where those children are than still expected to be able to meet at least minimum standards on state wide exams should be conflated with "remote schooling, that happens to take place at home."

      Participating in a online Zoom classroom or in the case you can't because of no internet service, doing some homework packet mailed you, run by a public school teacher is not the same as "home schooling" which is a different topic that people have strong opinions about, which is why we should be careful to avoid conflating it because it will be huge distract and prevent any useful progress for sure.

      My question is why is Zoom the only way? Given the extraordinary emergency powers various state and local official and imagined for themselves throughout this crisis why not use television. Sure its one way (but we also have telephone lines to address that. Just require local stations in these regions to turn over their daily schedules to school classes. Monday is English class 8a - 1st grade, 9a 2nd Grade ... , Tuesday Math/Algebra 2pm 8th grade ...

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by kenh ( 9056 )

        Homeschooling needs a teacher, and with two working parents, there's no teacher without internet.

        Add in the reality that some parents aren't capable, even if available, to home school their children. A parent that doesn't understand algebra can't teach it, for example.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by DarkOx ( 621550 )

          I am not suggesting homeschooling is for everyone. My wife and I are currently exploring it for our soon to be school aged child. She is a "home maker" and he is a todler so she can re-allocate some of her "day care time" to instruction time and pull prep time out of some other bucket. We have that luxury other don't, I am not pretending otherwise.

          I just see a buch of people running around saying they are "home schooling" when that is not what they are doing, and articles also using the term to mean someth

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by chispito ( 1870390 )

        My question is why is Zoom the only way? Given the extraordinary emergency powers various state and local official and imagined for themselves throughout this crisis why not use television. Sure its one way (but we also have telephone lines to address that. Just require local stations in these regions to turn over their daily schedules to school classes. Monday is English class 8a - 1st grade, 9a 2nd Grade ... , Tuesday Math/Algebra 2pm 8th grade ...

        Because the schools are worried that if their teachers are not constantly involved, it will look bad and they'll lose funding. My brother's school district is doing a hybrid distance/in person setup, with two days a week in person per group. Even though no students will be onsite at the time, all the teachers must be on campus on the off day for the distance-only day. Because they're worried about perception. Never mind that those teachers' children can't be onsite even if they're of the appropriate grade l

        • My question is why is Zoom the only way? Given the extraordinary emergency powers various state and local official and imagined for themselves throughout this crisis why not use television. Sure its one way (but we also have telephone lines to address that. Just require local stations in these regions to turn over their daily schedules to school classes. Monday is English class 8a - 1st grade, 9a 2nd Grade ... , Tuesday Math/Algebra 2pm 8th grade ...

          Because the schools are worried that if their teachers are not constantly involved, it will look bad and they'll lose funding. My brother's school district is doing a hybrid distance/in person setup, with two days a week in person per group. Even though no students will be onsite at the time, all the teachers must be on campus on the off day for the distance-only day. Because they're worried about perception. Never mind that those teachers' children can't be onsite even if they're of the appropriate grade level (I know this seems foreign to us non-teachers, but one of the tradeoffs for no real salary growth, along with a couple months off every year, is that you work exactly the hours your kids are in school. my brother's a singe dad so it's a huge benefit)

          Oh and as for TV, that sounds far more difficult than you make it sound.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by DarkOx ( 621550 )

            Oh and as for TV, that sounds far more difficult than you make it sound.

            And yet the local yocals manage to put on a new cast 3 times a day everyday!

            The biggest problems are probably network agreements and FCC rules, two things special government powers can nerf pretty easily. I mean he they crushed our 1A rights, without much trouble and those are constitutional not merely statutory or private contract matters.

            Other than that you already have studio and a cell phone. For a simple fixed camera presentation at the news desk, I don't see it being all that "hard" from a technical

        • Just require local stations in these regions to turn over and also need to make that time must carry for no cost to all local cable systems + dish / direct.
          No cost as in can't be blacked out at that time with an fee fight at school time.
          so if the local channel for school is abc and it's an O&O abc then say if the cable co is in an fee fight with ABC / ESPN then both sides must open the channel to all subs at school time.

      • Homeschooling is when your parents school you. These are kids who's parents both work full time (like most Americans) and don't have the time, skills or desire to home school. So you need to bring the kid's teacher into their home to teach. The only way to do that is with Internet.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        The problem is that we've squeezed all of the reserves out of our economic system. In this case we went from one parent working and one parent at home to two parents needing to work. That leaves nobody to help the kids learn at home.

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 )

      Yes, however in the world's richest country we should consider high speed internet access a basic infrastructure for everyone.

      Much like how these rural areas, have roads, electricity, and even old telephone service to even the most remote spots, these rural areas really need access to fast enough internet. I would say at least 10mbs.

      Much like the implementations of roads, the expense of providing high speed internet is easily made up by improved economic activity. Rural People will be able to buy stuff onl

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        Even if everyone agreed with that; its not like you can just snap your fingers and make it happen! Takes time to implement. You go remote educating during a pandemic with the infrastructure you do have not the infrastructure you wish you had.

        However, just like in the past, postal routes, then rail lines, then phone lines and electrification, were need to have a cohesive society so it may be the case the case with internet today. So sure before the next pandemic it might be a smart move to get serious about

        • Issue here is, high speed internet was supposed to have already been built for these under service areas at least a decade ago. The ISP companies were given huge amounts of money and tax breaks to do this. It's not a sudden idea, it's a multi-year failure.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by sjames ( 1099 )

            It's a multi DECADE failure. The telcos were handed that big wad of cash in the '90s. They have periodically been handed more. It's well past time to tell them to either get it done or return the money.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kenh ( 9056 )

        Fine, but the 'just build out the infrastructure' argument kicks the problem a couple years down the road.

        How do you make their education work today? Telling a third grader that they'll be back in school once Comcast builds out their network in two years isn't a workable solution to today's problem.

        • Not necessarily. It just takes some.effort. There isn't just one way to get High Speed Internet. You have Cable TV lines, You have satellite. You can even use existing telephone infrastructure to create good enough speed. Towers can be quickly built to cover fairly wide areas,

          This isn't as much as a physical one. but legal a legal one. As there are many businesses who want to keep a monopoly in an area, and doesn't want low cost internet as an option nor wants to pay for those last mile connections. T

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by kenh ( 9056 )

            Cell tower coverage is not ubiquitous in rural America.

            Satellite is always an option, but when a family chooses to not buy satellite service, does that mean we have to trench a fiber line to their rural homestead?

            • Reading the summery of the article would help point out how off the mark your comment is.... "suddenly plugged into the family's satellite Internet, which is spotty on a good day. You can forget trying to use Zoom or Google Classroom. "I soon found out that our Internet speeds were so slow, we had to spread it out all week long actually" They have satellite, they aren't refusing to buy it. But for usage of high speed internet, it's a flop. Like suggesting if they can do 28.8k over the phone, then why shou

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by bws111 ( 1216812 )

            The article is about Humboldt County, NV. Area: 9658 sq mi. Pop: 17000 Pop density: 1.7/sq mi

            No, they certainly do not have cable TV lines. No, telephone infrastructure is not 'good enough speed'. Yeah, they have satellite internet, and it sucks (see summary).

      • This is a concept that terrifies the ISPs... Notice I didn't sat large ISPs. For all intents and purposes there are NO small ISPs anymore.

        That said, the Space X low earth orbit satellite system (starlink) and Amazon's Kuiper systems bear significant watching.

        Starlinks actual performance vs the claims for the service are still masked in secrecy even though many actual birds are in flight.

        Even so, I'm betting on Kuiper. Bezos isn't much into bombast... Just performance.

    • it's not like Rural people are a different species than us City Folk. There's no reason why they can't have fast, reliable broadband except we keep putting crooks in charge of the government.

      Billions were given to provide those kids with broadband, promises were made and broken and nobody was punished. The companies involved didn't even give the money back.

      One of the big problems in America is Rural & City folk are constantly being told how different they are. It's always about something vague l

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kenh ( 9056 )

        The money went to run fiber in poor neighborhoods - there's more than one way to define "underserved".

        How many dwellings per mile does it take to justify a fiber run? These people lack cable TV, DSL, ISDN, etc due to the distance to their central office. They either pony up for satellite or move - we don't owe them broadband internet wherever they choose to live.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sjames ( 1099 )

          Nor do they owe the cities food.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by DarkOx ( 621550 )

          I agree we don't owe them broadband but we have already as a society agreed (at the state level) we do owe their kids an education.

          The choices are pretty strait forward. Stop panicking about COVID-19 (which simply isn't very dangerous to the school age demographic) or get them some broadband. The other possibilities really are not worth exploring when you consider cost. As pricey universal access to high speed internet services might be, its still going to be cheaper than the alternatives, save for one, us

        • How many dwellings per mile does it take to justify a fiber run? These people lack cable TV, DSL, ISDN, etc due to the distance to their central office.

          You might want to RTFS. They do have satellite. Apparently it is not very good/good enough. My mother lives in an area where satellite is the only option for high speed internet. She decided against is as everyone of her neighbors who has gotten it has had nothing but trouble with it.

          They either pony up for satellite or move - we don't owe them broadband internet wherever they choose to live.

          No, but the ISP's do own it to them as they took money and tax breaks starting in the 1990's to provide high speed to the entire country. But they used it only for the easy places/most profitable. The idea was not for the tax

    • News flash: the human rights criminals pushing the Covid tyranny are not looking out for the best interests of students.

  • Elon Musk to the rescue! (If the FCC league of doom doesn't derail everything.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      They gave an example of 4 kids and a work at home parent trying to share a satellite connection already. Not good.

      • I anticipate that the dynamics of sharing a low Earth orbit satellite connection will be very different from those of sharing a geostationary satellite connection.

  • I used to read about kids attending daily classes in the outback of Australia, hundred(s) of miles away from anything. At the time of my reading, they were relying on two-way radios. How did they do it? How did they manage to educate all those rural children?

    How did they make it happen decades/centuries, before the Internet existed? How did they do it before two-way radios were available for distance learning?

    The contrived dilemma of the modern day inability to educate without high-speed internet or in pers

    • Well, you see, learning isn't possible with a book, paper and pencil anymore. You are now required to have a laptop/chromebook practically hardwired into your child, otherwise surely it would be IMPOSSIBLE for them to learn anything.

      I suspect no Internet/cellphone would lead to a better overall education for all students, but school districts seem to like giving Google/Apple/Microsoft lots of money so they can show how much they are trying to teach our children.

    • How did they make it happen decades/centuries, before the Internet existed? How did they do it before two-way radios were available for distance learning?

      They met in a school house, which is problematic because of Coronavirus, which has been especially devastating (deadly) on these same reservations.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      They used amateur radio, and the teachers were trained in that form of instruction.

      In America, our teachers sat around since March sharing anti-trump memes among themselves and dreaming up impossible demands before they dare step back in a classroom. (End systemic racism! Universal healthcare! Living wage for all!).

  • You've got a copper wire to your place for electricity, so it's definitely doable. Fiber is easy compared to power lines. Just has to be done. We're talking about internet access like it's rocket science, but the Boren's kids could lay fiber if they're old enough to operate a mini excavator or a tractor with a cable plough.

    • a) Fiber requires repeaters that are supplied with standard 115V power.
      b) Fiber requires muxes and packet switches and standard 115V power at distribution points.
      c) Fiber has to be run back to some willing ISP and interconnected with even more gear that needs to be purchased.
      d) Roads need to be repaired after installation if using anything like a back hoe or excavator.
      e) Boring (too avoid road damage) is *expensive* and requires specialized gear. ... etc ... etc ...

      You honestly think Native Americans, and o

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by nagora ( 177841 )

        a) Fiber requires repeaters that are supplied with standard 115V power.
        b) Fiber requires muxes and packet switches and standard 115V power at distribution points.
        c) Fiber has to be run back to some willing ISP and interconnected with even more gear that needs to be purchased.
        d) Roads need to be repaired after installation if using anything like a back hoe or excavator.
        e) Boring (too avoid road damage) is *expensive* and requires specialized gear. ... etc ... etc ...

        You honestly think Native Americans, and other rural dwellers, can afford to do such a thing?

        Well, that's why we have a central government - to redistribute wealth into places that need it.

        Oh, sorry. I forgot America is stuck with 18th century crapitalism and can't move forward without offending some rich assholes.

        • Oh, sorry. I forgot America is stuck with 18th century crapitalism and can't move forward without offending some rich assholes.

          We prefer to call them "Job Creators".

          • Oh, sorry. I forgot America is stuck with 18th century crapitalism and can't move forward without offending some rich assholes.

            We prefer to call them "Job Creators".

            When the jobs and taxes paid are off shored they revert to asshole status.,

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by kenh ( 9056 )

          We are talking about areas with very low population densities, where neighbors can't see each other's houses. I don't think that as common in Europe as it is here in the US.

          For example, Montana at 147K sq miles has 7 people per square mile while Norway at almost 149K sq miles has 38 people per square mile. It is easier to serve a denser population.

          Montana population density & size: https://www.google.com/url?sa=... [google.com]

          Norway population density: https://www.google.com/url?sa=... [google.com]

          Norway Size: https://www.googl [google.com]

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by nagora ( 177841 )

            We are talking about areas with very low population densities, where neighbors can't see each other's houses. I don't think that as common in Europe as it is here in the US.

            For example, Montana at 147K sq miles has 7 people per square mile while Norway at almost 149K sq miles has 38 people per square mile. It is easier to serve a denser population.

            Montana population density & size: https://www.google.com/url?sa=... [google.com]

            Norway population density: https://www.google.com/url?sa=... [google.com]

            Norway Size: https://www.google.com/url?sa=... [google.com]

            World's largest economy, man. Come on.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        The solution is to give other companies access to utility poles.

        In Japan companies share lattice towers, basically elaborate utility poles with the capacity to carry a lot of cables. Telephone, cable TV, fibre optic, even power cables all use the same poles. That dramatically reduces the last mile cost and increases competition.

        Most countries have a monopoly on poles so regulation would be needed to open them up. Everyone pays the same rate for access, there are rules governing maintenance and necessary upg

      • a) No, it doesn't. Even with cheap gigabit transceivers not for a hundred miles. They are not that far from civilization: Their kids go to school.
        b) The networking gear is cheap, probably cheaper than their satellite system.
        c) Yeah, and if there isn't one, they can found one with their neighbors. It's not rocket science. Co-ops have been doing it since the internet became a household thing.
        d) You don't put fiber in the road. There's plenty of space right next to it.
        e) Nobody needs to be boring. Use moli

      • Native Americans casinos seem to have good fast internet in rural areas

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by SETY ( 46845 )

        Yeah they can:
        https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada... [www.cbc.ca]

        One employee and and an aerial bucket truck and this island has fiber internet. Pretty rural.

    • All you have to do is declare the local ISP a legal monopoly that is legally guaranteed that status for the next 20 years, as well as legally guaranteed a minimum profit on its infrastructure and services for that duration. Exactly like the electric companies.

      Enjoy overpaying for your 1Mbps internet for the next two decades, everyone. Don't forget to thank TheNameOfNick for it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kenh ( 9056 )

        Then all your rural customers sign up for the subsidized $20/month plan, and you lose money every month on ever connection for ever.

        Great business plan.

    • A neighborhood near me organized and paid to have the line installed because Comcast ignored them. It cost something like $15,000 per home to do it.

      That was 30 minutes out from Washington D.C. Rural Idaho? Good luck with that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Strider- ( 39683 )

      SO I operate the network to a rural school, in an exceedingly isolated location of the US. This year, because of the pandemic, the school population is down to 1, but it's typically around 8 to 12 students, ranging across the grades. Getting fiber to our site would be basically impossible for legal and logistical reasons. The school is in a remote community completely surrounded by incredibly rough terrain that is also Federal Wilderness. To build anything within the wilderness boundaries would take an act

    • You've got a copper wire to your place for electricity, so it's definitely doable.

      You're a funny bugger. Most rural communities are off the grid and running on their own power sources in the form of diesel generators, geothermal or solar.

      It's not unique to America, either. In Australia if you don't live within about 10-20km of a class 2 road then you're basically needing to supply your own power, water, sewerage and comms. e.g.: Dayboro is only 35km from the Brisbane CBD. Drive another five kilometres towards Laceys Creek and all of the government services completely stop: no power, no w

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday September 28, 2020 @09:55AM (#60550412)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • I don't understand... (Score:3)

    by Miles_O'Toole ( 5152533 ) on Monday September 28, 2020 @10:24AM (#60550522)

    The United States is, of course, the richest, most technologically advanced nation on Earth. Somebody must by making things up if they're claiming as much as a third of rural America has no internet access at all. I know America has nothing to learn from anybody else, because America is obviously the best, smartest, most "techni-capable" country in the world. So in the unlikely event it's true that so much of rural America has no internet access at all, much less high speed internet, it must be because it simply isn't possible to provide it.

    We Canadians try hard not to be rude, so I wouldn't suggest adopting our approach to providing internet access might help some of those kids mentioned above to get a decent education.

    I say that because otherwise, it might be considered rude to point out that Canada has somehow managed to provide high speed internet to the entire population of Nunavut (40,000 people in 35 communities). That doesn't sound like much. What's so difficult about getting high speed internet into the homes of barely enough people to fill up a suburb in a mid-western city? Well, it's all about the real estate...location, location, location. Nunavut, for those who don't know, is a Canadian territory situated mostly north of Alaska. Those 35 communities are scattered across about 800,000 square miles (that's a hair over 2 million square kilometres, the way we measure stuff). For reference, that's about the same as Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Oregon combined.

    • Those sites in Canada are communities that are basiclly small towns, with the people living in a small area. Fairly easy to do, a single sattelite connection, in a few large ones they ran underwater cable, and then some wifi equipment spread around town.
      The situation in a farm land community is that centralized town, already done you can get 100Mbps in most of them, now you have all the farms that are a miles away to get to the drive ways follwed by going down that 2-3 km driveway.
      So most people that wa

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      Somebody must by making things up if they're claiming as much as a third of rural America has no internet access at all.

      Yes, they are lying.

      They say that the households lack "reliable, low-cost, high-speed internet"

      They set arbitrarily high 'minimum' speeds, to knock out perfectly acceptable internet service.

      The assume anything over $50 isn't "low-cost" so that gets counted

      And the reliability factor, who knows what games they are playing with that metric.

      EVERYONE in the US has satellite access, how is anyone unserved? Because the people complaining think it's too expensive.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by pforhan ( 182787 )

        Satellite internet is barely internet. If you haven't used it then you wouldn't even be able to guess how bad it is. Many sites just won't work, all the javascript is too dumb to handle high-latency connections.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by kenh ( 9056 )

      I say that because otherwise, it might be considered rude to point out that Canada has somehow managed to provide high speed internet to the entire population of Nunavut (40,000 people in 35 communities).

      Bullshit.

      You have 38,000 people spread over 800,000 sq miles, and EVERYONE has "high-speed, low-cost, reliable" internet service?

      They delivered 15 Mbit service to all 25 communities, not every home, and the service is both wired and LTE (cellular) and is served off a satellite backbone at the low, low cost of around $125M, or about $3K/person.

      Link: https://www.fyimusicnews.ca/ar... [fyimusicnews.ca]

  • big gubrment bad (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by hdyoung ( 5182939 )
    All the rural areas vote conservative and republican. These groups have been pretty powerful in the last few decades, they loathe taxes with a white-hot passion, and they hate the federal government even more. Fine, but that means that the rural areas simply don't get much help or infrastructure development. Capitalism tends to pass over the rural areas because there just isn't much money to be made there. These areas fend for themselves and suffer. The big cities also mostly fend for themselves, but the ci

  • None of these posts about rural communities installing Internet service for themselves is relevant to this year's problem of educating rural children in a pandemic. We don't know yet whether or not Starlink will blow away the need for any more wired service to outlying locations by the time any of these proposals could be built out.

    This year we need a non-Internet way of getting these kids schooled.

  • I am guessing that rural customers who can't get cell reception still maintain a land line. I could be wrong. That said, why can't teachers have phone meetings (voice only, not text or internet) with their students? I know it's not as cool as Zoom but certainly the teacher can work with a student or a group of students to work through a lesson or a lecture.

  • The U.S. taxpayers have been forced to hand over $400+ billion to private companies to build out broadband in this country. In fact, the first allotment was done in the Clinton administration where we were promised 45 Mbps up and down for only $40/month.

    Since then, private companies keep coming back to the taxpayers saying, "If you give us a few billion more, we'll get it right this time. We're too poor to do it without a socialist handout."

    Obviously the issue is not with service. With all that m
  • of Internet. Heck, we once drove from one end of South Dakota to the other one summer. On I-80, you'd see a couple farms here and there and NOTHING in between Rapid City & Sioux Falls! (went to Mt. Rushmore). It's so far between cities & towns, it is cost prohibitive to supply things like internet access. Hell, some are lucky to have electricity & telephone service!

  • Flash Drive Kids (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Monday September 28, 2020 @02:47PM (#60551492) Journal

    The teachers and students in my county have a name for these students: "Flash Drive Kids". The school system delivers and retrieves USB Flash Drives to students with no or poor internet. The drives are used with the Chromebooks they issued, and have the assignments on them and operate totally off-line. In fact, some teachers are starting to recommend kids go that route because they are more organized than the online learning, which is using a big hodge-podge of online software (a lot of which is used improperly - like sharing a Google Present document that the student has to edit to answer questions - it's a travesty).

    So anyway, these students are called Flash Drive Kids around here.

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