When President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and thousands of volunteers helped to wire a high school in California, the world took notice. Educators, companies, and government officials around the globe launched their own campaigns to network schools and raise awareness about technology tools for learning in the classroom. NetDay exemplified an American spirit of community volunteerism and local support for education. The idea proved to be both compelling and flexible as organizations adapted NetDay to their local culture of community and educational priorities.

Netd@ys: A Continental Project

http://www.netdays2000.org/english/html/netdays/mitte.htm

The European Commission (EC) launched Netd@ys in 1997 to raise awareness in educational and cultural communities of the potential value of using new online technologies as teaching, learning and discovery resources. Netd@ys Europe is a week-long occurrence each fall encompassing thousands of demonstration projects, activities, open houses, and events all over Europe and beyond. The EC provides funding on a proposal basis to schools and organizations to do NetDay projects with a priority on pedagogical and cultural content rather than on the use of technology. More than 150,000 educational and cultural organizations, in 35 countries, have participated in events. These include schools, youth clubs, museums, cinemas, opera houses and vocational training centers.

NetDay France

Leslie Saul
Coordinator, NetDay France
Corporate Business Development, 3Com
leslie_saul@3com.com
www.netday-france.org

Many of the companies that supported NetDay efforts in the United States have international offices and encouraged these sites to work with local governments on wiring projects. In France, 3Com, Sun Microsystems, Siemens, and several other companies formed a NetDay association. They donated products, volunteers, and expertise in planning, training, and implementation. Leslie Saul, who had been the Smart Valley Project Director for the first NetDay in the Silicon Valley prior to Karen Greenwood, coordinated the NetDay France effort.

In September 1998, the association organized wiring events at one public and one private elementary school in the medieval village of Parthenay. City maintenance workers dropped the cabling to instructional rooms in advance, and volunteers were trained onsite to terminate cable and hook up computers. Edith Cresson, the European Commission Education Commissioner, attended the events and saw the volunteers in action. The day culminated with a press conference to answer questions about the model and the need for technology in schools.

We had about 50 parents volunteer for the first school - a lot of mothers who had never used a computer before. With training, they terminated the cable and hooked up the computers. Then their children showed them how to access the Internet. The mothers asked if they could come back and learn more. The school now opens a computer lab to parents in the evening one night a week.
-- Leslie Saul

Saul found the attitudes toward civic duty very different in France from the United States. Because of the high taxes they pay to support schools, companies and individuals were not accustomed to donating products and volunteering their time to support education. Schools in turn were suspicious of the companies' motivations. Even the role of the teachers unions differed. In the U.S., the unions supported NetDay efforts, but in France, the teachers unions initially protested NetDay Parthenay to push for equity: either all or none of the schools should be wired. In the end, Saul says it took longer for French government leaders to launch wiring efforts, but once they did, the projects were well thought out and successfully connected all the schools.

In the early days, we knew that the online resources and software needed to really impact learning did not exist. But no one was going to create online educational software and applications until the schools had online access. We made a conscious decision to install the technological infrastructure in order to encourage the development of the applications. Seven years later, we're right on track. The schools are connected, compelling online content and applications are emerging, and we can now focus on educational outcomes - using these resources intelligently to support teachers and help every child achieve.
-- Leslie Saul