Resources - and the Model of Rural Education

Looking & Listening: Staying Current using 21st Century Technology

Looking for Information

Use these search terms within Internet search engines (databases) to find additional library references: educational administration, rural education, rural, superintendent, principal, rural systemic initiatives.

Global Interaction: Email Conferences

There are several email conferences in Newsgroups (def.) or Listservs (def.) format which cover rural education issues.

Newsgroups
The links below open directly from Google's newsgroup directory system. Those using a specialized newsgroup reader can simply typed in the names of these newsgroups. Newsgroups with a higher frequency of discussing Rural Education topics include (listed in order of frequency):

• misc.education
• misc.rural

Listservs
Explore the Listserv link above to learn about newsgroups and how to subscribe to (receive the email) from the newsgroup listed below.

• RURSOC-L@lsv.uky.edu Rural Sociology Discussion List. An information delivery and distribution system for professionals interested in sociological research, teaching, extension, and policy relating to rural people, communities, and societies. Contact: Nancy Strang SOC014@ukcc.uky.edu - Milton Coughenour SOC007@lsv.uky.edu
• AppalDev@@maelstrom.stjohns.edu Appalachian Community and Economic Development List. For anyone else who is interested in Appalachian development issues, such as rural datafication, poverty, rural ecology, economic opportunity, etc. Contact Jonathan Prince aa078@seorf.ohiou.edu
• Rural Education">AERA SIG> Rural Education
• RURSIG-L@KSUVM.KSU.EDU (list) ; LISTSERV@KSUVM.KSU.EDU (listserv). This is an AERA (American Educational Research Association) Rural Education SIG (Special Interest Group).
• K12ADMIN@SUVM.SYR.EDU (list) ; LISTSERV@SUVM.SYR.EDU (listserv) ; Mike Eisenberg (owner). K-12 School Administrator Discussion.
  Description of K12ADMIN: A World-Wide Discussion Group For K-12 School Administrators has been set up to provide a discussion base for K-12 school administrators: principals, vice principals, superintendents, assistant superintendants, central and county office administrators, and others involved with K-12 school administration. Conversation on this list will focus on the topics of interest to the school administrator community, including the latest on school management, curriculum, services.
• K12SMALL@UAFSYSB.UARK.EDU (list) LISTSERV@UAFSYSB.UARK.EDU (listserv). A Forum for Education in Small or Rural Schools. Owner= siegrist@comp.uark.edu (Gerald Siegrist), at the U. of Arkansas - Fayetteville. This list is to provide a forum for administrators and teachers in small and rural schools to share ideas, concerns, and questions unique to their professional environment.
• WVRK12-L@WVNVM.WVNET.EDU (list) LISTSERV@WVNVM.WVNET.EDU (listserv) Ruralnet Forum on Computer Networking in Education. Owner= stepp@marshall.edu (Ermel Stepp)
• R-urban-D (Rural-Urban-Disparity Study Group) to Subscribe, send email to R-urban-D-subscribe@topica.com

Bibliography

For further research beyond those listed below, use these specialized search pages to hunt the web for "rural education" and other related terms. What stability there is on the web is not in the citations but in the search terms. Bibliographies in the digital age should be annotated with at least the search term(s) that yielded the article so that more current items can be found.
• Books and Articles
• Selected Online articles:
  
  • Interactivity: A Forgotten Art?
  • The Role of Online Communications in Schools: A National Study
  See also:

• Rural Education Directory: Organizations and Resources, 1993, provided by ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools (ERIC/CRESS) This is a very long and comprehensive rural directory. This 62 page document is in microfische as well, ED 359 015. No more recent version appears in ERIC searches.
  • 1.National Organizations (Associations, Networks, Centers, and Clearinghouses)
  • 2.Regional Educational Laboratories
  • 3.The National Diffusion Network
  • 4.Federal Government Agencies and Resources
  • 5.State Education Agencies and Organizations with Rural Programs
  • 6.State Data Centers
  • 7.Rural Journals
  • 8.Index by Organization Name
  • 9.Index by Territories and States
  • 10.Should Your Organization Be in the Next Rural Education Directory?
  
  
• The Journal of Research in Rural Education (ISSN 8756-0534), established in 1982 with the support of the University of Maine College of Education, publishes the results of educational research conducted in or relevant to rural settings.

Organizations

• Affordable Access, Rural Online - helps with use of new information technologies.
• Center for Research in Rural Education. Contact: Dr. Thomas Reed (912) 333-5925 FAX (912) 333-7167 Address: Center for Research in Education College of Education Valdosta State University Valdosta, GA 31698
• Rural Education Activities Programme - assistance to rural communities.
• ERIC Clearinghouse on Rural Education and Small Schools
• Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory Rural Education Program
• Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools
• Rural Clearinghouse for Lifelong Education and Development
• Rural Challenge - seeks to support and encourage rural schools, and provides grants for educational reform initiatives.
• Rural Education Institute
• Rural Inclusion Project - for educators on the topic of inclusive education.
• National Rural Education Association - Home Page. Through the years it has evolved as a strong and respected organization of rural school administrators, teachers, board members, regional service agency personnel, researchers, business and industry representatives and others interested in maintaining the vitality of rural school systems across the country. Call (970) 491-7022. Their publication, The Rural Educator, distributed 3 times a year [Fort Collins, Department of Education, Colorado State University] is held by ASU, with their latest copies from 1993.
• ACRES: American Council on Rural Special Education. American Council on Rural Special Education (ACRES) is an organization of educators and others committed to the enhancement of services to students in rural America.
• Centre for Rural Social Research. Rural education and training. The development of a professional programme for northern Canadian teachers based on Australian rural research and practices.
• The Rural Education Center is presently serving 83 smaller, mostly rural, school districts throughout the State of Washington, a part of the Virtual Professional Development School.
• Rural Education Institute, Eastern Carolina University, North Carolina. The mission of the East Carolina University School of Education's Rural Education Institute is to promote the interests and general welfare of rural schools and school systems through research, service, and leadership development.
• Office for Rural Education, Western Carolina University, North Carolina.
Return to the Outline of this Web Page.

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Model Initiatives and Research

Schools: Elementary, Middle and High Schools

Large District:

• Birdville ISD, a school district.

  Rural Independent District:
  

• Dublin School, small, independent, college preparatory high school, located at the base of Mount Monadnock in Southern New Hampshire.

  Elementary Schools:
  

• Ashby Elementary School, small rural public school in North Central Massachusetts
• K. William Harvey Elementary, rural K-4 school with 400 students in the heart of The Salish & Kootenai Flathead Reservation, Ronan, Montana.

  Middle Schools:
  

• Lake Butler Middle School, located in rural North-Central Florida.
• Washburn Rural Middle School , Topeka, KS
• Internet Texoma, Inc. , an Internet Service Provider for rural America.

  High Schools:
  

• Altamont High School, Effington, Illinois.
• Boiling Springs High School, Spartanburg, SC, a rural/suburban school of 1500 located in the Upstate of
• South Carolina.
• Hancock Central School District, public, rural school on the New York/Pennsylvania border, Hancock, NY. Nice list of other Internet sites of educational value.
• Lakeview High School, Columbus, Nebraska
• Lincoln County High School, Eureka, Montana, a rural high school located in northwest Montana.
• Northern High School - A small, rural high school in the mountains of Maryland
• Tabernacle Schools

Federal and State Initiatives

• National Rural Development Partnership. The National Rural Development Partnership, through 37 State Rural Development Councils and a National Rural Development Council, brings together federal, state, local, and tribal governments, as well as the private for-profit and non-profit sectors, to work in partnership for the improvement of rural America's communities.
• Alaska Rural Systemic Initiative
• Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative. The Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative (ARSI) is a collaborative effort among six states in Central Appalachia - Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. Central Appalachia is characterized by lagging student performance, depressed economic development, and persistent isolation from opportunities. The ARSI will stimulate sustainable systemic improvements in science, mathematics, and technology education for K-14 students in its 66 eligible counties, using the school and its surrounding community as the focus of its efforts.
• EDUCATION 2000: RURAL MINNESOTA IN THE WORLD PROJECT, a three-year partnership between the college and three rural Minnesota school districts (Laporte, Redwood Falls, and Brainerd) to help K-12 school systems develop curricula with a global perspective and practices, programs and organization which are consonant with that worldview.
• Rural Datafication Project , brings the power of the Internet to rural and underserved communities, partially supported by the National Science. Focused on the Great Lakes states.
• Program for Rural Services and Research, at University of Alabama.
• PACERS, at University of Alabama. "The PACERS, or the Program for Academic and Cultural Enhancement of Rural Schools, is an association of 29 small public schools located in rural communities throughout Alabama. Rated as one of the top rural education efforts in the nation, PACERS is a comprehensive approach to contextualized education linking school reform and community development."
• Land Tenure Institute. The Center's interdisciplinary research and training programs focus on legal, political, social, and economic institutions (markets, traditions, customs, rules, laws, and regulations) that affect equitable access to and sustainable use of land and other natural resources.

International Rural Initiatives

• STEMNet, a computer network for rural educators in Labrador and Newfoundland.
• Wits Rural Facility (WRF). A part of a major University of the Witwatersrand initiative in the central lowveld of South Africa. Wits Rural is interdisciplinary. It is concerned with rural development at all levels from grassroots to policy formulation. It is situated 500 km from Johannesburg, in a semi-arid, highly populated rural setting typical of old homeland South Africa of the Apartheid era. WRF has special research interests in: education; health; water and sanitation; ecology; sustainable natural resource management; social sciences.
• Rural Economy, Alberta, Canada.
• THE SOAR FOUNDATION, Scholarship Opportunities Across the Republic. The SOAR Foundation was established in 1995 to raise money in the United States to help educate children from poor families in the more impoverished rural areas of China.
• The Southern Alberta Rural Area Network Rap Sheet (SARAN Rap). A site dedicated to the tireless rural family medicine teachers and learners of Southern Alberta.

Funding and Construction Sources

• TIIAP, Telecommunications and Information Infrastructure Assistance Program (TIIAP)
• Internet Texoma, Inc. , an Internet Service Provider for rural America.

Research

• The Role of Online Communications in Schools: A National Study
Return to the Outline of this Web Page.

Rural Datafication

Some forty to fifty years ago, the rural regions of this country were engaged in a struggle that become known as rural electrification. This effort to catch up now has a new twist in that the effort has become one to leapfrog their metropolitan powerhouse counterparts in significant ways. There is much that technology can do: distance education, multimedia, composition and calculation. The Internet in particular has become the equivalent of the metaphor of the cowboy's six-shooter. It becomes an equalizer. But rural systems are incapable of doing this well unless what technology cannot do is understood as well.

Distance Education

Distance education refers to learning and teaching that occurs when the learner and the teacher are separated by geography and/or time. Increasingly, distance education efforts are becoming international in scope and initiated outside of our nation.
• BushNet provides Internet access for schools located in Far Northern Queensland, Australia.
• Ghana, Africa, K-12 rural education across continents.
Return to the Outline of this Web Page.

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C.R.O.P. (Communities Resolving Our Problems)

The vision of C.R.O.P. is an integrated effort between economic, health and educational systems to share problems and solutions in a problem solving model that seamlessly integrates the tools of the information age.
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