The largest three educational entities in Southern Nevada - the Clark County School District, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the Community College of Southern Nevada announced today the birth of EDU.TV, cable Channel 70, which will be available to Cox Cable subscribers beginning Jan. 1, 2000.
EDU.TV will present news about campus and community events, distance education classes, children's programs, and other education programming.
"We at UNLV are pleased to be entering this partnership with CCSN and the Clark County School District," UNLV President Carol C. Harter said. "EDU.TV will allow these institutions to reach out to Southern Nevadans as never before with interesting, educational programs. We are grateful to Cox Cable Communications for making Channel 70 available."
UNLV plans to use its third of the 24-hour channel's programming time to present university-credit distance-education classes, student and community productions, and coverage of such campus events as the Barbara Greenspun Lecture Series.
"Access to classes is an important issue in our rapidly growing community," UNLV Provost Douglas Ferraro said. "We expect this project to improve access and provide enriching programming for Cox subscribers in Southern Nevada."
The school district plans to air ready-to-learn programs for pre-schoolers, after-school homework assistance for students in the district, courses for home-schooled and homebound students, GED programs, and school-dropout prevention classes.
Channel lO's building will house EDU.TV's program-origination equipment, and a fiberoptic link to each campus will allow live-remote program origination.
"This new educational channel will allow the school district to provide new educational opportunities for all students and professional staff," CCSD Superintendent Brian Cram said. "We expect the channel will impact thousands of individuals each year."
CCSN will telecast 57 hours per week as its portion of 16 different distance education programs, student productions, and satellite programs. It will cover such academic programs as American Sign Language, business, college study skills, English, health, history, literature, mathematics, music, psychology, sociology, and Spanish.
"CCSN is pleased to be partnering with Cox Cable Communications to expand our relevant education programs to a broader audience - creating more opportunities to change more lives," CCSN President Richard Moore said. "The cable service access for education is much needed by our growing community and puts us on a par with other metropolitan areas of the country."
