Photograph by George Sakkestad
Volunteer Karl Dinger helps hook up each classroom at Van Meter School to the Internet during NetDay.
By Shari Kaplan
Although NetDay '96 arrived as planned March 9, not all Los Gatos schools participated in the event, named by President Bill Clinton as an opportunity for thousands of public and private schools to become "wired," both internally and to the Internet.
Two local schools took full advantage of the NetDay '96 program:
* At Van Meter Elementary, which had a network plan and materials all lined up in time for NetDay, parent teams spent the day drilling holes and pulling wire. Efforts will continue for a few more weeks until the school is fully wired.
* At C.T. English Middle School, more than a dozen parent and professional volunteers received training from a group of experienced crew chiefs and then attempted to wire the administrative wing and all 10 classrooms.
The schools that did not participate stepped back for various reasons.
* At Blossom Hill School, parent volunteers are ready to help install computer network lines but did not participate in NetDay because Blossom Hill lacks a complete network plan. The school is also awaiting extra money for supplies to be raised by the spring jog-a-thon. The school should be completely wired by May or June.
* Daves Avenue already has high-speed T1 data transmitting lines installed, and wiring has been under way for weeks. All classrooms and the office will soon be connected and will have Internet access as well.
* Lexington, which has five computers in each classroom, is already almost completely wired. The school was also the beneficiary of money and materials donated by Steve Wozniak.
* Loma Prieta Elementary School is already almost fully wired; work will be complete within a few weeks.
* At Fisher Middle School, parents, staff and professional volunteers completed wiring projects in January and February; the school now awaits software only.
* Lakeside School is completing its computer network plan, and is scheduled to begin wiring classrooms later this month. A large group of parent and professional volunteers are lined up.
* St. Mary's School is still trying to get the proper telephone service to support getting wired; until then, the school is using several Ricochet wireless modems made by Los Gatos' Metricom. Wiring efforts should be started by the end of the school year.
* Hillbrook School already has its own World Wide Web page, although the library and classrooms are not all wired yet. Teachers and parents will be ready to begin their work in April.
* At Los Gatos High School, a fiber-optic telecommunications system is already in place, and many computers already have Internet access. The work that remains to be done is well under control by a volunteer team that includes many students.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, March 13, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved