`sports Brawls' Writer To Appear 
John Mcgran, Author Of The `world's Greatest Sports Brawls,' Will Make An 
Appearance From 2 To 4 P.m. Today At Waldenbooks In The Wyoming Valley Mall.

Anna Wolensky

By BILL KELLY
 Friday, November 27, 1998 &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Page: 





In the room normally reserved for the Board of Trustees of Public Broad
casting Station WVIA in Northeastern Pennsylvania, Television
Producer/Director Jim Frushon is meeting face-to-face with a group of students
from a rural north ern Pennsylvania high school, where a more conven tional
field trip by bus is considered too expensive. He shows them live pictures of
our en gineering control room and produc tion suite; answers their questions
about working in TV; how he got his job; how certain effects are achieved;
and, if the students are young enough, how much money he makes. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 This scene is not at all unusual at WVIA, where our professionals in radio,
public relations, accounting, engineering, sales and marketing, and management
are available to students in four states who connect with us over PictureTel
video-conferencing equipment. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; WVIA has become the most popular site for teachers and students in school
districts from northern Pennsylvania south to Cape May, N.J., where over
10,000 students have taken video field trips, 2,500 of them to our studios. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 Other popular sites include the Houston Space Center, and the State Museum
in Harrisburg. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 Our role has grown to include housing, managing and marketing a $200,000
state-of-the-art video bridge which can link up to 24 schools simul taneously.
Despite our four-year involvement, WVIA and our partners have just begun to
understand the potential. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 It all began in 1994 when we learned that a large federal grant was about
to be awarded to a small group of schools near Towanda, where the local
district superintendent had created a dramatically effective educational
application for corporate video-conferencing equipment. Dr. Daniel Paul
envisioned the sharing of motivated teachers and their courses over video.
Reaching out for technical help, Dr. Paul contacted Commonwealth Telephone
Co., which offered complimentary network and engineering consultation and free
bridging services. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 Starting with six schools, he founded what later became known as the
Partners in Distance Learning, now including over 200 school districts in
Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 His idea involved an unusual barter-like arrangement where literally
everyone- students who needed to be challenged, instructors who desired to
teach courses for which there was insufficient local interest, and schools
willing to take risks to improve- could all get what they wanted. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 One of the classroom pioneers was Peter Henty, a teacher of History at
Towanda High School, who had lived and worked in Japan and was qualified to
teach the language. Officials there could not justify assigning Henty time to
teach a mere handful of students, until video-conferencing made tripling of
the class possible. Soon he was bridging small classes in rural Tunkhannock,
and Ocean City, N.J. With his enthusiasm for the language, personal
experiences, his computer laptop and document camera, Japanese became a real
learning experience. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 Henty's story became even more remarkable when his three separate classes
entered a national competition for a trip to Japan, and one of the remote
sites won. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 We made it our business to find out about this success story in our
backyard, and arranged to meet with Dr. Paul. Quickly we caught his passion
for distance learning and saw how the region's public television station could
partner with the consortium and help it grow. We affectionately christened Dan
Paul our "whirling dervish" for his ability to think big and act fast, and
invited him to join the WVIA Board. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 Within weeks, WVIA was partnering in projects that would greatly increase
public awareness of distance learning and lead us to become a major player.
For instance, we knew that what these students were learning over video in
small, economically disadvantaged districts was a great story and too few knew
it. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 Television people are storytellers, and Dr. Paul and his Board accepted our
proposal to co-produce a film on the project, but focusing on children, not
equipment or grants. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 We filmed second graders in a Cape May science class who wore handmade caps
resembling penguins and took turns asking and answering questions about the
arctic creatures with kids they'd come to know in faraway Montrose, Pa. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 A couple of hours later, in a room of emotionally and physically challenged
third graders, the Cape May Zoo Lady placed her snakes and Mikey the Turtle on
little desks there, and we could hear the gasps of the excited children
hundreds of miles away. The film has not only been seen on public television,
but has enjoyed wide national distribution. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 The WVIA facility now includes special cameras in television engineering.
We also have adapted our television studio for large-group meetings over
video. We have frequently brought guests to our live public affairs programs
from sites at schools throughout WVIA's 20-county coverage area. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 The partners consortium has now hired WVIA to produce educational software
from digital pictures of several historical sites in the four-state area.
These will be incorporated in distance-learning field trips. This current
effort may be a model for a far more ambitious project with national
implications. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 Together we have co-funded a full-time distance learning coordinator, based
at WVIA, to work with teachers, encourage the sharing of classes, and
facilitate WVIA's own video-conferences. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 Yet there is a huge gulf between the considerable successes achieved and
the potential for this technology to literally bring the world to the
classroom, live and interactively, at modest cost. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 At WVIA we'll concentrate on seizing the obvious opportunities to more
closely meld our other TV and radio programming and community-service
initiatives to distance learning. The consortium's work can't grow without
funding, so we'll aggressively market the video-conferencing bridge to
commercial as well as non-profit clients. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 
 The opportunities we've had to work with the Partners in Distance Learning,
and to have a real impact on new approaches to education, have been nothing
less than exhilarating. &nbsp;&nbsp;&amp;nb

Wvia's Technology Puts Learning On The Cutting Edge