Speakers - N through R

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An enrolled member of the Otoe-Missouria Tribe of Oklahoma, a descendent of the "bear" clan with family roots on the Rosebud Indian reservation in South Dakota, Randy serves as an independent consultant working in the field of art, culture, and technology. Current activities include telecommunications planning, community- based network information services, earned-income generation development, small business and community economic development, T/A and training on the fundamentals of telecommunications and network information services/internet based tools. Most of his work is targeted towards reservation based tribal communities.

Ross serves on various national boards to include The Association of American Cultures (TAAC), Washington D.C. arts policy and advocacy group on cultural diversity; steering committee member ArtsWire, a national communication network for arts organizations hosted by the New York Foundation for the Arts; Non-Trustee Board member for the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Frank Odasz

Frank Odasz is the Director of Big Sky Telegraph. Originally from Cody, Wyoming, Frank received a B.A. in Psychology from the University of California, Davis, in 1974, then worked in Wyoming as an oilfield roughneck, independent carpenter, and dude ranch manager until receiving a Master of Science in Instructional Technology from the University of Wyoming in 1984. Frank has been an assistant professor of computer education at Western Montana College since 1985, where in 1988 he founded Big Sky Telegraph, an online educational community network.

BIG SKY TELEGRAPH; SUMMARY AND VISION

For over eight years, Big Sky Telegraph has strived to create an an online educational community supportive of grassroots innovations and experimentation focused on 'Real Benefits for Real People.' We provide economical common sense connectivity options that reduce the risk of creating a class of information have-nots.

BST offers free access, and free online lessons, to anyone, anywhere, anytime and showcases highest value resources from the Internet. BST demonstrates how an educationally-focused community network can support K-100 lifelong learning. BST will customize its services to support grassroots innovations and projects initiated by its members. BST no longer offers Internet access subscriptions, but continues to offer and develop online training opportunities and resources.

Big Sky Telegraph's World Wide Web homepage is http://www.wmc.edu (select Big Sky Telegraph.) Apple Computer has donated a Mac web server and Mac First Class workstation to support BST's transition to Internet Multimedia distance learning delivery. Big Sky Telegraph has been sited for excellence by the White House's 1992 Agenda Report on the National Information Infrastructure and by the former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment's report "Making Government Work; Electronic Delivery of Federal Services." BST is featured as a model educational and community network in dozens of books and publications and enjoys a widespread reputation as a successful bottom-up grassroots network.

BST is in the process of becoming a community web skills support center offering graphics and web page creation expertise to schools and communities; showcasing the best of the best in web page design, graphics and software tools. BST is stay on the cutting edge of web development with the specific mission of bringing these capabilities to schools and communities as soon as possible.

The BST PHILOSOPHY: Value bandwidth and human bandwidth will prove more important than volume bandwidth. By demonstrating how all citizens can be both learner and teacher, we're demonstrating how ongoing knowledge access skill training, and citizen evaluation of highest value resources, can become a vehicle for rehumanizing and revitalizing communities of all descriptions.

Jean Armour Polly, Net-mom(SM)

Jean Armour Polly is the author of The Internet Kids Yellow Pages, and the original "Surfing the Internet."

She was formerly the Director of Public Services and Internet Ambassador at NYSERNet, Inc. where she was co-principal investigator on the landmark Project GAIN: Connecting Rural Public Libraries to the Internet study (1994) and producer of the accompanying video. Jean has a special interest in telecommunications and Indian nations, and use of the net to enhance the economic development of rural areas.

Prior to that, Jean was a public librarian for sixteen years. She co-owns and co-moderates PUBLIB, the Internet discussion list for public librarians.

Jean is a member of the American Library Association and is a former director of the Library and Information Technology Association's Board. She was one of the first two women elected to the Internet Society Board of Trustees, and holds memberships in the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.

An entertaining regular on the demo and speaking circuit, Jean has jacked into the Net in places as diverse as: Alaska, the Czech Republic, Italy, Hawai'i, and historic booth number one at Roger's Frontier Bar in Old Colorado City, Colorado.

She lives on a hill in Central New York, above a woods full of raccoons, fox, and deer. She is currently a freelance writer and independent contractor. Mom to a ten-year-old son, Stephen, Jean also enjoys her cats, ducks, and a garden pond full of goldfish and lilies. More about Jean is available at her home page: http://www.well.com/user/polly. or you can email her at: polly@well.com

Laura Parks-Sierra

I teach fifth grade at Taos Day School (K-8, 170 students) on Taos Pueblo and I also coordinate the schoolÕs technology program. Our school is rich in technology and the students use it to creatively integrate and demonstrate their knowledge and learning through computer projects: student-authored HyperCard adventure games, personal signs using draw/graphics programs, peer surveys with a database, etc. During this past year my students have become involved with the Internet using Taos's La Plaza link. Students have their own La Plaza accounts and choose the educational projects they want to take on.

I also provide ongoing staff training for using computers. This year we collaborated with La Plaza to train 20 teachers, aids, administrators, support staff, parents and school board members on the use of e-mail and the World Wide Web.

Before moving to Taos three years ago I was a technology educator at a charter middle school in San Diego. Prior to that I was a bilingual computer resource teacher at another large inner-city elementary school.

Laura Parks-Sierra lps@laplaza.org

Taos Pueblo Day School, 5th Grade

Taos, New Mexico United States

Adam Clayton Powell, III

Adam Clayton Powell, III, is Vice President of Technology Programs at the Freedom Forum. In that role, he directs conferences, seminars and programs on journalism and media companies and their policies and practices, and he coordinates investigations of new media and new information technologies, presenting current information to audiences that include journalists, managers, educators, policy makers and researchers.

Powell served as Director of Technology Studies and Programs at the Freedom Forum Media Studies Center from 1994 to 1996. Prior to that, he was a consultant and lecturer at the Center from 1985 to 1994, focusing on unanticipated consequences of technological innovation in media organizations. He twice served as a Fellow at the Center, in 1990 and 1993. And he also coordinated a series of South Africa media projects, analyzing print and electronic journalism in southern Africa and supervising an exchange of journalists between the U.S. and South Africa.

In the past, Powell was an executive producer at Quincy Jones Entertainment, where he produced Jesse Jackson's weekly television series in 1990-1991. He has also served as vice president of news programming at National Public Radio, a manager of network radio and television news for CBS News, and news director of all-news WINS in New York and of the ABC News/Westinghouse Satellite News Channel.

Articles by Powell have appeared recently in the New York Times, New York Newsday, Chicago Tribune, Columbia Journalism Review, American Journalism Review, and Reason magazine, and he has contributed to three recent books, Demystifying Media Technology, Radio: the Forgotten Medium, and Death by Cheeseburger: High School Journalism in the 1990's and Beyond. Powell is a regular panelist on public affairs broadcasts on CBC television in Canada, and served as 1994 election night analyst for WNET television in New York.

Among the awards Powell has won are the Overseas Press Club and Associated Press Awards for international and regional reporting, respectively. And in 1989, he initiated and supervised a reporting project at NPR that won every major award in radio, including the Peabody, Columbia- duPont, Armstrong and Ohio State awards.

Adam Clayton Powell, III

Vice President, Technology Programs

The Freedom Forum

1101 Wilson Boulevard, 22nd floor

Arlington, Virginia 22209

phone: 703-284-3553

fax: 703-284-3540

email: apowell@freedomforum.org

new URL: http://www.freedomforum.org

Anders Olsson

I´m 43 years old, born in Stockholm. Graduated from Journalism School in 1979 and have worked as a reporter/writer/journalism teacher since. For five years I was also executive director of an organisation called (in translation) "Digging journalists", modelled after IRE - Investigative Reporters and Editors in the US. The idea was (still is) that journalists should help each other do a better job - to generally raise the standards of investigative journalism.

As early as '79 I wrote my first articles on computers & freedom of information. I just published my third book (in translation): "IT and Free Speech - the Big Brother Myth". This spring I will travel the US and Canada to study the use of IT and its impact on democracy.

Daniel G. Pruitt

Daniel G. Pruitt is a senior member of the technical staff at La Plaza Telecommunity. He also teaches UNIX at UNM-Taos. He has a B.A. in Computer Science/Business from Furman University , and an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of South Carolina.

Before moving to Taos, Daniel has worked for NCR Corporation (Columbia, SC), Compaq Computer Corporation (Houston, TX), and Convex Computer Corporation (Dallas, TX). He has extensive experience in UNIX and NetWare device driver programming in the following areas: SCSI, Ethernet, and Token-Ring.

dp@laplaza.org

Janel M. Radtke

Janel M. Radtke is Executive Director of the Center for Strategic Communications, a nonprofit organization that educates and informs nonprofit managers about how to advance program goals by taking advantage of today's communications environment and how to leverage resources through communications planning. She created and launched the Center's program in 1992 and is the author of the series, NEW IDEAS IN COMMUNICATIONS. Before joining the Center, she was Vice President for Communications at Planned Parenthood Federation of America where she created, developed and implemented that organization's national communications program; as Director of Internal Communications, she launched the Federation's internal communications program which included a national computer network and video newsletters. Ms. Radtke has fifteen years of experience in nonprofit communications which includes the use of private television networks, telecommunications systems, electronic networking and cable access as well as a background in communications policy and technology. She co-founded New York Law School's Communications Media Center and has consulted with the Independent Television Service, a national consortium of cable access and media arts organizations and several cities including Erie, PA and Salisbury, MD.