Alaska's Bering Strait School District - GCI SchoolAccess Distance Learning Service

Area: over 50,000 square miles
Total Population: Approximately 5,375
Number of Schools: 15
Number of Students: 1,753
Smallest School: 50 students
Largest School: 200 students

The Bering Strait School District (BSSD) extends along the coast of the Bering Sea, encompassing a series of small villages in an area larger than the state of Minnesota. Many of the district's fifteen schools are only accessible by helicopter for nine months of the year. The schools' remote locations present unique challenges for teachers and students to access quality curriculum materials and instruction.

With the introduction of GCI's SchoolAccess Distance Learning Service (DLS), students and teachers in rural schools are now presented with new educational opportunities, within the school district and around the world. SchoolAccess DLS is an extension of GCI's K-12, education-focused SchoolAccess program. It includes videoconferencing technology that enables live, interactive delivery of audio and video distance learning courses. The technology has resulted in remarkable educational improvements and new experiences for BSSD students.

GCI is now in its eighth year of providing SchoolAccess services to BSSD, with SchoolAccess DLS in its second year of service. Each year, more than half of the 1,753 students in the district engage in distance learning. This technology provides students with access to courses otherwise unavailable in their small, geographically isolated schools, bringing the same choices in education to all students. Every student in BSSD has access to broadband, and subsequently, access to a world of opportunities.

SchoolAccess DLS is an important way for students to gain exposure to new people and new information. Using videoconferencing, students can build personal connections with the remote teachers they are learning from; they can also work in real-time, collaborative projects with other students in remote schools. Students can take virtual field trips anywhere around the world and explore career possibilities from professionals who would not be able to fly out to a remote village to talk about their occupations.

There are a number of ways BSSD uses distance learning technology. In one example, the content of the high school graduation qualifying exam math preparation class and Algebra I course was team-taught by a master teacher at the Alaska Vocational Technical Education Center in Seward, Alaska, in collaboration with a math teacher in each village school. The results were remarkable. In one Algebra class, ninety percent of the 'core students' (those students that attend school on a regular basis) achieved marked increases in their test scores. In addition, teachers in the villages saw attendance rates increase dramatically with the new, fun method of learning high school math.

SchoolAccess DLS also provides the opportunity for collaboration between districts. BSSD engaged in a "Battle of the Books" with the Lower Yukon School District, through a series of twenty-three videoconferences. The districts used this contest as practice for a statewide competition as well as to conduct inter-district practice sessions. Students in BSSD also used inquiry-based science units called "Video Sleuths" to collaborate with students in other schools to examine and solve essential scientific questions. These lessons required students to form hypotheses, test these with hands-on experiments and collaborate with student teams in other schools to form conclusions based upon their research and experiments.

BSSD participated in three distance learning missions with NASA's Johnson Space Center Distance Learning & Education Project, including one on robotics in space. With SchoolAccess DLS, students have taken virtual field trips to NASA facilities, the Smithsonian Institution and the Buffalo Zoo, all without ever leaving the classroom. The technology has also brought people, as well as places, into the classroom. A rural career fair videoconference allows professionals from different occupations such as law enforcement and healthcare to speak to BSSD students about their careers and the steps they took to get there.

In addition to connecting BSSD students with others around Alaska and the country, SchoolAccess DLS also helps students within the district. BSSD students in grades 5-8 collaborated to create a live newscast that spanned different topics and schools. Students planned and managed the content of the newscast and worked across grade levels and across school boundaries to produce the newscast.

SchoolAccess DLS technology assists students with special needs. Teachers at one BSSD school check with specialists through videoconferencing to monitor an autistic student's progress, eliminating the costs and hassles of flying in a specialist on a regular basis.

While students have benefited immensely from the addition of SchoolAccess DLS, teachers have also enjoyed the advantages of distance learning. BSSD is expanding to include vocational career pathways through a newly-opened regional learning center, the Northwest Alaska Career and Technical Center. This center allows aides to take classes through distance learning in order to meet the federal requirement that all classroom aides - Para Professionals - have at least a two-year Associate's degree to work in the classroom. SchoolAccess DLS allows instructors to stay in their home location while continuing their education.

Distance learning benefits all levels of the education process, helping teachers change the way they teach and students change the way they learn.