I’m pleased to share Connect Minnesota’s interview with Matt Grose (Superintendent at Deer River Public Schools, member of Minnesota Broadband Task Force and member of Blandin Broadband Strategy Board). Matt is a huge proponent of technology in the schools. He has kindly done some guest blog posts here. It’s always interesting to hear from him about technology in the schools. I’m just pulling a few answers from a recent interview he did with Connect Minnesota…

I like Matt’s holistic view of broadband…

Can you point out some implementation challenges?

We are very rural. My district covers 540 square mile and there are about 870 students in the district—less than 2 kids per square mile. A lot of the district is covered by dense forest and this lack of population makes it difficult for providers to develop a business case for broadband expansion. And the heavily forested area makes wireless a less than ideal solution because trees gobble that wireless right up. In town, here in rural Minnesota; I have higher broadband speeds than in the metro Twin Cities area. But in my district, 30 miles away, there are people whose only option is satellite, which is terrible especially for the way that we are trying to leverage the Internet for education. Anytime there is a giant divide like that it makes it difficult figure out when it’s OK to make that type of learning experience the normal way to do business.

And a look at the real reason it’s important to offer Minnesota students technology opportunities – it prepares them for their future…

What have you learned in terms of the positive impact of technology on education?

One of my teachers share a Facebook post that a student had written. The student said “Thanks Mrs. Sheppard for using technology in your class. It was the same thing that we used in college and I am way ahead of the game.” Those are the kind of things that we really thrive on. We prepared this kid, he got to college and that academic shift wasn’t a big deal for him because he was prepared for it.