Yvonne Marie Andrés
lorenetworking
California schoolteacher who, given a computer with no software in 1984, wrote her own and built a store-and-forward network that connected twelve thousand schools before the web existed.
She was teaching low-achieving children in Oceanside when Apple gave every California school a computer with nothing on it. So she and Al Rogers, another San Diego teacher, wrote what was missing: a free word processor first, then FrEdMail - Free Educational Electronic Mail - built from a bulletin-board program a teenager had written and lent them. It ran on an Apple IIe and worked the way FidoNet and the African store-and-forward links in this catalogue worked: children wrote in class, the work went to a floppy, and in the middle of the night, when the school's one phone line was free and the rates were lowest, the machine dialled the next school and passed it on. A story could take days to cross the country, but it was affordable, which was the point. In 1991 the network was gatewayed onto the NSFNET; at its peak it joined twelve thousand schools through three hundred and fifty nodes. In 1993 it became Global SchoolNet, the 1992 Global Schoolhouse having already put students in four places on two continents onto a shared watershed study over desktop video. She wrote the first teacher's guide to the internet. The pattern recurs among the pioneers - the tool did not exist, so the person who needed it built it - with the difference that the person was a primary-school teacher and the network was made of a donated computer, a borrowed program and the night rate.
Also known as: andres, global schoolnet, fredmail, global schoolhouse
Sources
- Her 2017 Internet Hall of Fame induction speech: she began teaching very low-achieving students; in 1984 Apple's Kids Can't Wait programme gave every California school a computer with no software, so she and Al Rogers, another San Diego teacher, wrote a free word processor, FrEdWriter, and then FrEdMail, Free Educational Electronic Mail, which ran on an Apple IIe using store-and-forward: students wrote in class, saved to a floppy, and in the middle of the night, when the school's phone line was free and rates were cheapest, the writing was forwarded to the next location; in 1991 thousands of FrEdMail users gained NSFNET access through gateways at Merit in Michigan and in San Diego; at its peak FrEdMail was used by 12,000 schools with 350 nodes around the globe
- Internet Hall of Fame feature: Rogers found a bulletin-board program written by a teenager, who gave permission to use his code, and from it they built their first email program; messages could take a couple of days to cross the country but were affordable; in 1993 the FrEdMail Foundation became Global SchoolNet and launched the Global Schoolhouse, where schools registered project ideas and were partnered worldwide; International CyberFair, her longest-running project, is a virtual world's fair in which students investigate their own community
- Internet Hall of Fame inductee page: created the non-profit Global SchoolNet in 1984 and the Global Schoolhouse in 1992, connecting youth with scientists, authors and explorers on projects of real-world importance; facilitated the first live streaming television-internet broadcast in 1995; named one of the 25 most influential people in education technology in 2000; began as a teacher and technology mentor in Oceanside, California
- Wikipedia and the Global SchoolNet founders page: the seed was an Apple IIe received in 1983 at Pacific Elementary School, one of 10,000 Apple donated to California schools; the original 1992 Global Schoolhouse project for the NSF brought together students in Tennessee, Virginia, California and England for a watershed pollution study shared over CU-SeeMe desktop videoconferencing; she co-authored TeleSensations in 1988 and wrote CERF'n Safari, the first teacher's guide to the internet