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What the Internet does for rural communities

© Greg Cruey

In 1989, I worked for a small and yet-to-be accredited developing college that was in the process of building a campus.

The campus of the Pacific and Asia Christian University (now University of the Nations) on the Big Island of Hawaii) was a three-minute walk from the ocean. And the founders of the institution had some, well, unique ideas about education.

In retrospect, one of those ideas impresses me today for the foresight it shows on the part of the people it came from. In 1989, the Pacific and Asia Christian University was not planning to waste much space on a library - even though the University was divided into colleges of education, the arts, Christian ministry, counseling and healthcare, communications, humanities and international studies and science and technology.

Why weren't they planning on the type of mammoth library most universities revolve around? They believed as far back as 1989 that most of the resources they needed would be available in a computerized format (CD ROM or over the Internet) in the near future. Building a large library and collecting actual books would be a waste of money, space and time....

Many observers were skeptical at the time. But it is beginning to appear as though they were right...

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The Internet has changed life.

How much it has changed life is difficult to judge. But few people 10 years ago could have foreseen the possibility that online trading would could cut the broker out of the stock market.

Nor did many people 10 years ago think that email and something like ICQ might one day serve as a substitute for long distance phone calls.

But the University of the Nations in its early years may have had real insight (or perhaps inside information): the Internet is coming into its own as a resource for education.

And it is the smaller, isolated, rural communities (like my own little part of Appalachia) which have the most to gain from th use of online resources in Education.

A complete overview of what the Internet has to offer education is beyond the scope and space limitations which I have for this article. But just in the area of literature (say from Middle School through College) there are an amazing number of texts available for free online.

For example, Do you remember reading Shakespeare in High School? I read Hamlet. Everyone read Hamlet. Why did everyone read Hamlet? Well, it was among Shakespeare's best works, but so were a dozen other plays. Money probably played a role. Money was the reason the high school British Literature class taught Hamlet year after year instead of teaching a different Shakespeare play every year. If the play had been changed, the school board would have had to buy new books...

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