I am nervous about contacting people I want to interview for this project. I think I will make up a tenative list, then put each of their names and contact info on a sheet of paper, then list questions as they occur to me.

I have started working on a project about E-learning tools and distance education. I will be posting all of my findings, articles and thoughts about distance learning to this blog.

One of the articles I recently came across Far-flung site can make goals more challenging by Mike Bowler of the Baltimore Sun, points out that although rural schools are diverse in location, they have some common challenges.

I went home this past weekend to be with my family for the first time in two weeks. I am lucky that I am able to get home most weekends. Obtaining an education has come at a high price, one that is paid not just by myself, but by my family. They have to take up the slack in our family, while mom, metamorphasises from a fairly traditional wife and mother role to being a college student and living alone for the first time in her life. It is tough. It is a daily struggle to keep focused on the goal and not let discouragement overtake me.

I am one of the lucky ones. I have the support of all of my family, and the means that while being whittled away,were enough to at least launch me into the world of being a student again.

I used to dream of going to school, ache for it. I bitterly regretted through the years, my lack of education. I could surrmount the financial barriers to obtaining an education but I could do nothing about the physical barriers that distance presented. When my rural community two years ago was able to obtain the means to link to the internet, my world expanded.

I don't think alot of people fully grasp the concept that "rural" does not any longer have to mean "isolation"

I was able to take courses "online" from the University of Minnesota, a six hour drive from my home, while I was working full time. It took a while for the full importance of this tool called "internet" to sink in, but when it did, it changed my life.

I started to dream again, to come alive to the possibilities and to see a way to use the new technology to better not just my life, but the lives of other rural people.

With the education I am obtaining at Bemidji State University, I intend to create educational programming and content for distant learners. So that students like those at the Bering Strait School District do not go through life without a basic education.