This year, I was lucky to embark on a completely new direction with the Externship. Working with and through ETS Broadband, my extern partner and I worked together informing residents of rural communities about a Federal Grant to offer free High-Speed Internet to their communities. We went door to door, made phone calls, spoke with community leaders, and even had a booth at the Lincoln County Fair. At one point we did a Secret Shopper to expose the many “untruths” pretty much all of the major players offer. Some offer serious high speeds, but when tested, came to a fraction of the speed. Some offer “cheaper prices,” and end up blowing up after three months. This was a great way to unite rural communities (where I teach), with the opportunities of Federal Funding and the importance of high-speed internet at reasonable prices. I will be able to bring this back to my STEAM class this year showing the science of broadband, expressing the process of engineering the actual fiber optics and laying the lines, the different graphic designs that we used in flyers as art, and obviously everything together is the technology of broadband. I would love to work with this group again and look forward to externing again this upcoming summer. Attached are some pictures that include: One of the flyers we door knocked with, a few maps of the areas we walk and knocked, and a screenshot of how we layered different maps to know when and where to make contacts.