> telecommunications in the educational environment.
How did you get it?
Carol- a private company (Learning Enhancement Associates)headed by an ex school Principal, in collaboration wih the Otago Primary Principals' Association (Otago is the province) (Primary Schools are the equivalent of your elementary schools) and Telecom South set up a six month pilot project which began in March this year. Eighteen schools in this province were provided with
- a 386 IBM compatible computer with a 61 mb hard drive
- a 2400 modem
- a fax and fax catcher
- a hands free phone
- a colour dot matrix printer
- associated software and training.
The equipment was valued at $11 000 but we were able to purchase it as a package at just over $5000.
What
> worked for those of you who actively participated in
> getting the equipment installed? What "selling"
> techniques worked best?
I was also able to get a grant to explore the use of CD-ROM so my school had a little extra on the others. As we live in a rural area, I invited the local high school students who travel 40km by bus to school each day to come to this school in the evenings to access the CD-ROM encyclopedia for their assignments.
When we had a demonstration evening for parents, the fact that the high school students also had access to the equipment as well as the obvious success my children were having was a very strong selling point. This is a very small community with 50% of the parents on Social Welfare benefits so the raising of that amount of money was a real effort. However, it is now done. The computer is also used for school administration. Hope this helps.
