Descriptions of the three pilot projects follow. A new project unveiled at the University of Michigan today is designed to give students, teachers, and workers a road map for navigating through the information technology tangle. Information technology has broken down the barriers of time and space that used to separate people from each other and from all kinds of information resources.
People are now able to work together in ways only imagined a few years ago.
But we need to provide people with tools and methods to make good use of these new connections. The idea is not only to give people access to information technology tools and services, but also to help them learn how to combine those tools in the most useful and effective ways. Partnering with the University of Michigan to extend the resources of the Ameritech Learning Initiative to people at home, at work and at school is truly exciting. The project is in keeping with Ameritech's tradition of community service, said Cooper. They have worked closely with space weather researchers , for example, to develop and evaluate suites of computer-based tools that allow the scientists to collaborate across space and time, sharing access to data, computer models, and even scientific instruments scattered throughout the world.