Satellite Communications for Learning
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Satellite Communications for Learning Associations (commonly known as SCOLA) is a non-profit educational organization that receives and re-transmits television programming from 120 countries around the world in 80 native languages. These programs are available via satellite, cable TV and the Internet reaching 450 colleges and universities, 6,000 schools and 55 city cable systems .
[edit] Origins
Reverend Leland Lubbers, a Jesuit priest and art professor, started SCOLA on the campus of Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska in August 1981. While attending the first national expo of homemade satellite dishes, Lubbers was inspired after witnessing satellite receivers delivering broadcasts from Europe. Believing that this new technology could be used to bring the world closer together, Lubbers built a $750 satellite receiver in a garage on the Creighton campus. A year later, Lubbers and a student crew wired the campus for closed circuit cable television which included satellite broadcasts from France and Mexico. The single channel was named "Jay TV" (after the Creighton University mascot, the Bluejays). With the help of Francis Lajba (current SCOLA CEO and president), Lubbers soon developed a computer program that tracked Soviet satellites which delivered news broadcasts in Russian.
In 1992, SCOLA started broadcasting on the local cable service.
In 1993, SCOLA relocated to an acreage east of McClelland, Iowa. This 13.5 acre plot was dubbed the "SCOLA Antenna Farm."
[edit] Today
Currently SCOLA operates 24 hours a day on 8 channels and employs a staff of 38 employees. The SCOLA Antenna Farm contains 29 satellite dishes with an annual budget of $1.5 million. Other SCOLA services include weekly faxes of newspaper front pages from around the world and audio services which broadcasts on a satellite audio channel. The online Insta-Class Service provides weekly study guides for teachers to use in the classroom.
Since 1995, an exchange program with China Yellow River Television based in Tai Yuan, China has sent Chinese anchors to America to broadcast Chinese news back to China using SCOLA's Iowa station. Several dozen government agencies and military groups subscribe to SCOLA seeing the benefits of learning a foreign language by full immersion via satellite broadcasts.
