Dear Elected Representative

I have not written much about politics in this blog but with the change in power in Congress and in the State of Ohio there are some new legislative opportunities that will impact education and educational technology.

Barring some backhanded moves during the lame duck session of Congress, the COPE Act appears to be dead. This act would have given IP and cable video providers national franchises instead of local ones, opening the door for companies to cherry-pick who they serve and remove the power of local authorities to enforce service standards. The bill also had no provision for network neutrality, the "rules" that have governed the internet until recently and prevented service providers from discriminating among the many packets of content on its network. I hope that in this new Congress we will see Net Neutrality made law, and universal service and local control made a central part of our telecom policy.

Momentum seems to be gathering in support of the Digital Opportunity Investment Trust (DO IT). This will be a pool of money generated by the government auction of electronic spectrum that will, according to its backers:

DO IT’s goal is no less than to transform America’s education, workplace training, and lifelong learning through the development and use of the revolutionary advanced information technologies comparable to those that have already transformed the nation’s economy, its communications system, media, and the daily lives of its people.

DO IT will enable the nation’s schools, universities, libraries, museums, and public broadcasters to reach out to millions of people in inner cities and remote regional areas, no matter how poor or deprived, in the U.S. and throughout the world, with the best of the educational and informational content now locked inside their walls. It would support the research and development of new models and prototypes of educational content, taking full advantage of the Internet and other new digital distribution technologies.

In Ohio, a bipartisan group of lawmakers has proposed HB 676 that would commission the "Ohio Broadband and Wireless Telecommunications Task Force" that would:

examine and make recommendations on the availability of broadband and wireless telecommunications in rural southeast Ohio and any economic impact such availability creates, the present or future availability of broadband and wireless telecommunications in all Ohio counties, and any other issues the Task Force deems appropriate.

Central to Ted Strickland's Gubernatorial agenda is his "Broadband Ohio Project" that, through several efficiency measures in state government, would create the"Ohio NextGen Network to manage long-term oversight and planning of Ohio’s high performance network." Among the outcomes will be:

• Establish the Ohio Community Learning Centers Initiative, to boost the use of online and distance education services through Ohio’s network of community technology centers.
• Use the Ohio NextGen Network to help private sector telecommunications providers complete the extension of affordable broadband connectivity to all citizens in every one of Ohio’s 88 counties.
• Use Ohio NextGen Network to connect state and local government to the benefits of next generation broadband.
• Make the Ohio NextGen Network available for economic development and industry.
• Use Ohio NextGen Network for health care research and development.

Lastly, I hope the US Congress will let DOPA (Deleting Online Predators Act) die. Spooked by high profile incidents involving MySpace -- and looking for some easy campaign stump material -- some lawmakers acted to block social networking sites from schools receiving federal money. The overly broad measure could actually cripple the legitimate educational use of some technologies and assures that youth exploration of the social net will only occur away from adult supervision.

So, if you if these proposals move you I encourage you to write your elected represenative.