Alaskan Leader Keeps Rural Students Connected

Few schools in the United States are more remote than the 18-student K-12 Qugcuun Memorial School in Oscarville, Alaska. Despite that isolation -- and despite the fact that the school has just three teachers on site -- the students at Qugcuun Memorial still have access to geometry and biology classes taught by highly qualified teachers, as well as up-to-date electives like digital photography.

Students owe that kind of educational access, in part, to the efforts of Dan Walker, 53, an assistant superintendent at the 4,000-student Lower Kuskokwim school district. He has steadily increased the number of distance-learning courses taught by certified teachers through the use of videoconferencing technology, the type of technology available to students and teachers even in the most remote areas of the district, and has strengthened the reliability and durability of the infrastructure that makes it all work. And he's done it with limited funds in a district where 90 percent of the population lives at or below the federal poverty level. "Technology becomes an equalizer for kids in these small, remote communities," Walker said.

"I saw the Internet and technology as a way to bring down those barriers and to get kids a broader experience and access to the wider world." Walker is proud of his district's 100-megabit Internet connection, which has come at a "tremendous effort" and costs about $20 million a year. But with reimbursement from the federal E-rate program, which helps provide connectivity to low-income districts, Lower Kuskokwim pays only about $2.5 million annually for the Internet services, he said.