SCOTT CITY SCHOOL BYTES INTO INFORMATION AGE

SCOTT CITY -- Scott City students now have access to global learning.

If they want to know about rainfall in Africa, the space exhibit at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington or talk to a pen pal in Spain about Spanish culture, students can go the school library and access MOREnet through a computer.

The school went on-line this month with MOREnet, the Missouri Research and Education Network, a consortium originally designed to connect more than 60 institutions of higher education with Internet, a worldwide network of computer networks.

MOREnet is bringing that worldwide connection to local school districts and public libraries.

Some 292 of the state's 535 school districts applied to participate in the Technology Network Project by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE).

Twenty-one public libraries are also being brought on-line this year, said Bill Giddings, project director. With the schools and the libraries involved, all but seven of Missouri's 114 counties will have access to Internet, he said.

"The opportunity for collaboration is very high with Internet," Giddings said. "Teachers are no longer isolated. They will be able to get on Internet and ask for various discussion lists and join that exchange."

In Cape Girardeau, the school district and the public library are participating in MOREnet. Representatives of each organization, plus two from the Scott City school, have recently completed training to participate in the project.

Jeanette Mastin, Scott City High School librarian, said the 16 hours of training was intense for her and elementary librarian Loretta Templeton. Mastin said the training hit the high points and the participants were told to take the information home to experiment and pass on to their fellow teachers.

"Once we learn how to use this, it will be great." Mastin said. "There's all kinds of information out there that we'll be able to use."

MOREnet provides full text from more than 200 magazines and an index on another 200. The service also provides access to about 25 newspapers around the world.

"We couldn't buy and store that much in our library here, but it's now available to our teachers and students," Mastin said. "MOREnet opens a lot of resources to smaller schools."

The first priority is to educate teachers on using the service, Mastin said. The teachers need to know what's available on MOREnet and how to use that in the classroom.

Electronic mail may be the most beneficial aspect of the service, Mastin said. Teachers can use E-mail to find answers to local problems from sources throughout the world.

Students can also use E-mail to contact those in other countries to cooperate on projects.

For school administrators, it's important to have access to the DESE and the universities, said Carl Rosenquist, Scott City elementary principal.

There are many subject areas -- science, language, mathematics and geography -- where the capability of worldwide research will be helpful to students and teachers, he said.

Access to MOREnet cost the district $500. The school also needed a computer with eight megabytes of RAM, a 14,400 baud modem and a dedicated phone line.

In the Cape Girardeau School District, a subcommittee of the district technology committee is studying how to use MOREnet and to introduce it to the students, said Kimberly Gwyn, district technology coordinator. She hopes that is completed by March.

"One key to using Internet is that creativity is a must," Gwyn said. "Students will have to be creative in how to use the information. It's also a good source for educators on developing lesson plans and classroom ideas."