Rural Schools In America Fight To Bridge Digital Divide
Some states, fearing a divide between rural and urban communities, have developed statewide initiatives to provide technology to rural schools. Maine, for instance, gives every student a laptop, and Alabama requires all school districts to offer Advanced Placement courses through distance-learning technology, where students video-conference with teachers.
But in many places, the onus is on the already-strained staff of the schools to acquire and then use things like computers and iPads, leading to pockets of innovation, like that in Edison. Although it leaves a line in its budget for technology upkeep, Edison has supplemented its tech experimentation with a $10,000 grant from the Denver-based Morgridge Family Foundation.
Rural America lags behind the rest of the country in Internet usage, making rural schools an important center of connectivity in the communities. In 2010, for instance, 57 percent of rural households had broadband Internet access, compared to 72 percent in urban areas, according to a November 2011 report by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Useless Landscape
A lone cloudburst hijacked the Doppler radar screen, a bandit hung from the gallows, in rehearsal for the broke-necked man, damn him, tucked under millet in the potter's plot. Welcome to disaster's alkaline kiss, its little clearing edged with twigs, and posted against trespass. Though finite, its fence is endless. Lugs of prune plums already half-dehydrated. Lugged toward shelf life and sorry reconstitution in somebody's eggshell kitchen. If you hear the crop-dust engine whining overhead, mind the orange windsock's direction, lest you huff its vapor trail. Scurry if you prefer between the lime-sulphured rows, and cull from the clods and sticks, the harvest shaker's settling. The impertinent squalls of one squeezebox vies against another in ambling pick-ups. The rattle of dice and spoons. The one café allows a patron to pour from his own bottle. Special: tripe today. Goat's head soup. Tortoise-shaped egg bread, sugared pink. The darkness doesn't descend, and then it descends so quickly it seems to seize you in burly arms. I've been waiting all night to have this dance. Stay, it says. Haven't touched your drink.
D. A. Powell
via Poem-A-Day by Poets.org: http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/345
