BROADBAND IN ANY LANGUAGE

In his wildest dreams, Mark Burnside never thought he'd speak Russian or Japanese. “I can't believe that I ever actually comprehended either one of those languages because I have no talent for it,” said Burnside, an instructional technology professional at Davis High School in rural Kaysville, Utah.

Burnside learned the languages almost by osmosis as part of his job as educational TV programming producer at the school. The program allows students throughout the state to learn Japanese and Russian via classes transmitted over closed-circuit television and the Internet.

As facilitator “A,” Burnside runs the show, works with “talent” — read: Davis teachers — and prepares the graphics materials that are broadcast as part of the course. A facilitator “B” is located in each of the schools to make sure the signal is coming through, the class is behaving and the necessary paperwork is distributed.

“The students see an instructor and computer-generated graphic educational aids where I use PowerPoint software in the target languages,” said Burnside. “Our classroom situation is interactive.”

The network can reach 200 sites throughout the state, but generally, only three to five rural high schools sign on for the difficult language courses. With about 20 interested students throughout Utah, the only way to give this kind of instruction is via the Internet. No one school can afford the cost of the teacher, but every school — with state help — can afford the video equipment.

“They have live video cameras at their schools; they have microphones at their schools; they can see the teacher live in real time, turn on their microphone and ask a question,” Burnside said. “I can bring their feed in to my equipment and send their pictures back out through the rest of the site to the rest of the kids. It's like a big open classroom with five different wings in it.”

Not that there's unlimited funds to do this. Burnside is working under budget constraints that already stripped away a fiber-optic connection and left him with copper wires. Even a limited network, though, is very important in a rural area, he said. “We have two students in Grandsville that take Russian. They would never have that opportunity without this.”