Bossert is a former Assistant Superintendent of the Office of Information and Telecommunication Services (OITS) in the Hawaii Department of Education (DOE) and current Director of the Hawaii Education and Research Network (HERN) Project. He also teaches courses on educational planning and technology for the College of Education at the University of Hawaii (UH).

The HERN Project grew out of a combination of events. Results of Sharen Arakaki (DOE) and Jodi Ito's (UH) work on the Kalama Project were surfacing and changing what DOE thought it was going to do Internet access for DOE teachers. At the same time the announcement of the first round of sponsored NIE (National Infrastructure for Education) grants was made. Jodi, Sharen, David (Lassner UH) and Phil sat down and discussed options based on what was coming out of the Kalama Project.

DOE had hoped to provide Internet to every DOE teacher by 1995. In light of the questions raised by the Kalama Project, however, the HERN team felt that it would be better to delay rollout until some of these problems could be investigated. At the same time, UH, DOE, and East-West Center had gotten together and formed what is now known as HENC (Hawaii Educational Networking Consortium). UH was way ahead in the Internet field and in networking infrastructure development. The HENC model looked at making the money of all three institutions go farther in networking by cooperating to build a common network. The initiative proposed by Senators Carol Fukunaga and David Ige Jr. didn't pass in the State Legislature; but, the UH's Board of Regents and the DOE's Board of Education decided to institute HENC anyway.

Several unrelated events occurred during the last ten years that resulted in my being able to participate in the development of the HERN Project. As a former President of Hawaii Loa College, I was involved in a number of projects within the Windward District of the DOE with the then District Superintendent Kengo Takata. Subsequently, I began work with GTE as a Strategic Planning Consultant for Strategic Information Solutions (SIS) and assisted on a project to devise a company-wide automation plan and then spent three years as a strategic systems manager with GTE implementing this plan.

At the same time, the Communications department (Dr. Dan Wedemeyer & Dr. Stan Harms) was looking for individuals to teach a course in the new UH Telecommunication and Information Resource Management (TIRM) certificate program. In 1990, several of the DOE participants in the TIRM program informed me of the opening of a position in DOE dealing with Information Technology and suggested that I apply. I did so and was hired by Superintendent Charles Toguchi to be the first Assistant Superintendent of the DOE's new Office of Information and Telecommunication Services.

The HERN Project has focused its research in two specific areas:

1. Design, implement and support a large scale (statewide) Internet services for education and research networks, and
2. serving as a catalyst for moving K-12 institutions toward the use of the Internet.

In regard to the first area the question is to what extent can the use of online educational resources serve as a foil to initiate or accelerate restructuring educational activities? HERN has taken the problems identified by the Kalama Project and used the research results to define the design of an optimal network. To do this, HERN has had to answer questions such as: Where do you put the infrastructure (machines and cables); What is an appropriate access interface; and How do you support a large group on a shoestring budget.

As far as the second area of research is concerned, the process is still underway. The biggest impact HERN has made has been the change in teachers' attitudes about the Internet. A definite shift of mindset from consumer to producer has occurred as a result of HERN's intent to empower users to take control of the technology.

HERN has changed my attitude also. The course I am presently teaching this semester is looking at the extent to which the Internet can become a new educational environment -- to be an environment that replaces physical schools. I teach entirely differently now because of HERN -- the Web and Listservs are primary tools for teaching.

My "Boxes" article came from what I learned from HERN. The original insight to use technology to effect change in schools was somewhat naive because of the hidden "structures" which inhibit institutional change. I completely overestimated the rate at which public institutions are capable of changing. On the other hand I underestimated the speed at which teachers could change. It was much faster; I thought it would be a longer haul. The emersion-type learning environment is an important feature of the HERN Project. The two-week Summer Workshops transformed them. Having an abundance of information and being overwhelmed in a rich-learning environment, empowered them to make choices on their own.

Once HERN is gone I think it will be remembered primarily as a catalyst for introducing the Internet to K-12 education. HERN is a network of people rather than the project itself. Based on this, another grant proposal was drafted to combine the self-help HERN model with the models of TIRM (UH) and Telecommunications Technology for Teachers (T3), a DOE program similar to TIRM, to be taken to a national scale. Although this was not funded, the DOE has recently been awarded a major federal grant to support its &qout;E-School&qout; Project. Also I have been offered the opportunity to work with a similar project (10 times the scale of HERN) with SchoolNet in Ohio. This project's main objectives are to get 100,000 classrooms wired, set up a multimedia workstation for every classroom, and train 100,000 teachers in multimedia resources.

Going in, I had a theory that the Internet would be a new learning environment. HERN is an example that it will happen. I am excited now about going to Ohio for the opportunity to again empower people -- 2 million estimated faculty and staff. In the long term, people will have and take more control/responsibility of their own learning program/activites. It has been unusual -- no extraordinary -- to work with the team of people who came together three years ago to make something like the HERN Project happen.