Saskatchewan Gets High-Speed Internet (CommunityNet)

Your local high school is about to go high speed, and we're talking Internet access. The province is spending $71 million to connect nearly every school in Saskatchewan. But what are we getting for our money? Neal Herlan reports.

Something revolutionary is happening in Strasburg, Saskatchewan. It's still a small, quiet prairie town, so small the locals don't bother giving the first three digits of their phone number. But two months ago, Strasbourg caught up with Canada's biggest cities. The local school got high speed Internet access, and it's having a profound effect on students.

Okay, what's on this webpage are some definitions.

This physics class used to be taught using books and a blackboard.

What kind of wave do you see now?

Science concepts are illustrated by visiting websites and clicking on animation sequences.

You couldn't put that class on the Internet before. You could probably only put about five or six of them on the net. If they all logged on at the same time, a bunch of them would actually be refused to get on and some of them would get booted off after we got going.

The Saskatchewan government is investing millions of dollars to bring high speed Internet to the classroom. It's part of something called CommunityNet. And the goal is to bring more technology to rural schools and hospitals.

Alright, I'd like everybody to log into their computer if you have trouble.

Lorne Gottslig has been teaching for 16 years. Working at a rural school meant he didn't always have the same facilities as in the city. But now one thing is equal the computers.

Getting high speed in every school is an excellent idea because it creates a level playing field. So what a teacher does in Regina or Saskatoon could be translated over to a teacher that teaches in rural Saskatchewan.

Some of the books in library, we may not have all the books that, say, a city school might have. So we can go on the Internet and look for resources there.

V equals F times lambda.

But how big of a role should the Internet play in these classrooms? And what are the benefits to learning?

I started as an English teacher. That's my background. I moved to technology.

Alec Kouros is a professor at the University of Regina. He shows teachers how to use technology in the classroom.

The Internet is here to stay. And I think the people that are here in this room probably accept that because you're here to learn a little bit about it.

Kouros supports the idea of bringing high speed Internet into schools, but he says students and teachers need to be more skeptical about the material they find.

For a while it was very utopian, but I think it's becoming a little bit more realistic in terms of attitudes towards Internet by teachers and students. They're seeing that there is a limitation there and I think there always will be a limitation towards what the Internet can actually offer.

Kouros thinks some educators have embraced the Internet without considering what the educational value is. It's a point he tries to make in his seminars.

Critical thinking, I think more important now than anything. We've got to teach kids to think.

It's a concept that's hard for many kids to understand. Some are all too willing to see the Internet as a fountain of knowledge.

The Internet provides you with basically everything that you need to know. If you want research for something that you can't find in encyclopedias, go to.

The Internet, a web file.

Some critics say the government has more important things to spend money on than high speed connections. Viewpoint shared in these classrooms, the school library may be empty, but the teachers here say they've now got a tool more powerful than a book. They've got technology. Neal Hurland, CBC News, Strasbourg.