Daily Archives: March 9, 2007

Internet-Based Learning Tools

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I’ve been working this past year with University of Minnesota extension educator Eli Sagor on a project to create a new web-based resource for family forest land owners (MyMinnesotaWoods). In the process, Eli has done lots of research on Internet-based learning tools, and came across this piece (below). He writes: “if you haven’t seen this yet, take the three minutes to watch it now. It’s cool.” Indeed it is: from html to ethics and aesthetics and privacy, via anthropology and hypertext.  

Getting from Here to There

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Road SignHow do we get from here to there? Sometimes this question is literal like when my son and his friends are planning an evening out. Sometimes, it is policy oriented, like how do we reach community goals of economic vitality? Over many years, my work with communities has been about helping communities stimulate economic development by intervening in the private marketplace. These activities range from minor interventions like marketing (providing more information to prospective community investors) to financing businesses (loan guarantees or incentives) to the purchase, development and sale of industrial land and buildings. In each of these instances, you could argue that this is strictly a private sector role – for realtors, bankers and land owners and developers. The energy required for community action is generally equal to the failure of the private market to meet the needs of the community. Communities with robust economies (Twin Cities suburbs, for example) rely on the private sector for these activities. Rural communities may have comprehensive programs with a full suite of tools and strategies to overcome distance from markets, workforce shortages, lending practices and other impediments. Continue reading →

Rural Telecon Congress 2007

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Bill ColemanThanks to Bill Coleman’s imagination, last Fall I got to travel with him to Little Rock AZ to attend the annual Rural Telecon Congress. Bill heads up his own consulting firm, Community Technology Advisors and since 2005 has been working with Blandin Foundation to provide coaching and technical assistance to the 29 rural Minnesota communities enrolled in the Get Broadband: Keeping Communities Competitive program. Bill suggested that, using the Get Broadband program story as our calling card, we go to Little Rock and learn more about best practices for promoting the benefits of ultra high speed Internet access. He thought we could use what we learned to help design “phase II” of the Get Broadband program.

As hard as it is for me to escape the tyranny of my daily inbox, I am always glad when I do because of the new ideas I hear about and the new people I meet. When we got there, Bill and I conducted a survey among Congress attendees asking how their work and lives would be changed if they woke up tomorrow to RTCfind their homes and businesses connected to an ultra high speed network. We were surprised at how hard it was for even these saavy telecommunications advocates to answer this “live the dream” question. Most of us still don’t live in that kind of world, and so it’s hard to know what we’d do with all that speed. It seems to me that answering that question is key to generating the political will and public and private resources required to build the “big broadband” infrastructure we need to thrive in the global economy of today and tomorrow.

So I was tickled to find in my in-box this morning an announcement that the theme of the 2007 Rural Telecon Congress, to be held October 14-17 in Springfield, IL, is “capturing the promise,” with a focus on effective utilization of broadband connectivity.