Cable in the Classroom developing plan to move service from the TV to the Internet

The Canadian Cable Television Association plans to deliver its Cable in the Classroom program in a way that taps directly into the government’s desire to have the nation receiving high-speed access by 2004. Industry Canada recently announced the creation of a new National Broadband Task Force that will draft recommendations on how broadband Internet can be delivered to all communities by 2004. The task force’s report is due to government by March 31, 2001. One of Brian Tobin’s first jobs as Industry minister will be to appoint representatives to sit on the new National Broadband Task Force. The groups’s new chair, David Johnston, says representatives will be drawn from the private and public sectors, including local communities. He couldn’t say how many members it would include, although many people CCR spoke with suggested that anything larger than 12 or 15 would be unmanageable. Johnston is no stranger to the federal government’s information highway agenda. In the 1990s, he headed up the government’s two Information Highway Advisory Councils, the recommendations of which led to the Liberal government’s "Connecting Canadians" initiative. He is currently president of the University of Waterloo.Janet Yale, CCTA president and CEO, says Cable in the Classroom, which encourages teachers to videotape programs on cable for use in the classroom, is moving from a screen-based service to one where material is accessed online. "This government initiative fits in beautifully with Cable in the Classroom. We hope to offer related teacher materials online, perhaps eventually allowing them to download whole teaching modules and even the actual shows," she says. Yale adds schools, universities and libraries would likely be targeted first under the initiative, so Cable in the Classroom could be an earlier beneficiary of the government’s commitment. In September, Jean Perras was hired as executive director to lead development of television- and Internet-based education materials at Cable in the Classroom. Perras won’t elaborate on the specifics of where he plans to take the cable program until after he meets with his board of directors on Dec. 5. By then, he expects a background paper and a policy statement will be ready. "You can imagine with the arrival of the digital revolution, teachers might, I underline might, have access to a lot of the programs through Internet connections. The television programming is our meat and potatoes. But the Internet comes in and complements all of that," he says. "For example, if the Discovery Channel (Canada) had something on whales, you could sit on your screen and look at the program, and you could also have a sidebar on the ten best web sites that we’ve looked at that talk about whales to help (teachers) with the research. There’s more and more of that in the United States, with big systems like CNN and A&E heading in that direction. We’re looking at that too." Cable in the Classroom is now delivered to 9,000 schools, with local cable companies installing the lines and absorbing the cost of providing monthly service. Perras estimates that cablecos have invested about $20 million in the initiative over the past five years. Some 360 hours of copyright cleared programming from 37 specialty channels and other programming services is made available through the 53 cablecos who have signed on to the program. Perras adds, "When I was hired, I was told to look at the possibility of connecting much more the Internet, broadband and all that with the television. What does that mean? We threw the idea around with some educators, and they said just to make sure they knew how to use the technology – all together." Perras, who doubles as deputy mayor of Chelsea QC, has experience with Internet-based education. As a founding member of Learning for a Sustainable Future, he helped integrate the principles of sustainable development into a the school curriculum, partly using the Internet.

Cable in the Classroom developing plan to move service from the TV to the Internet

Broadcast | October 26, 2000

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