Schools get high-speed Internet connection

By Adrienne Steinfeldt, August 20, 2005

It used to take what felt like hours for Charles Patton, guidance counselor at Ohio County Middle School, to search for information on colleges for his students.

Now it's a snap.

Ohio County Public Schools got connected this week, with high-speed Internet access to every school in the county.

Every school building and the central office are now connected to each other, too.

Patton said the quicker speeds will help keep students' attention on their work.

"They won't have to wait so long," Patton said. "Patience is not something they've mastered. This is going to help them be a little more attentive to what they're doing because they can do it a lot quicker."

And they can do more, said Tony Minton, chief information officer for the district.

The high-speed BellSouth fibers connecting every school in the district to the Internet will allow teachers and students to download large files in a reasonable amount of time.

That means access to things like online streaming media, videos and learning programs.

United Streaming Media, Minton said, offers "thousands of hours" of educational programming that can now be downloaded straight into the classroom.

If teachers tried that with the old connection, they'd be timed out before half of the file got finished.

"Now, it's almost instantaneous in comparison," Minton said.

It cost Ohio County Public Schools $7,120 for the equipment to allow them to hook up to the BellSouth lines, and it will continue to cost $204.70 per month, per school.

"Our way of looking at it, that's like paying for four DSL home installs and we cover the whole school, so that's pretty good for us," Minton said.

The Universal Service Fund, a fund for libraries and schools that comes from cell phone taxes, offset much of the total cost of installation of the lines.