Why Distance Learning?

In this episode of Why Distance Learning, Seth, Allyson, and Tami speak with Heather Gate — Executive Vice President of Digital Transformation at Connected Nation — about how the digital divide keeps changing shape, and why closing it takes more than laying cable.

Together, Seth, Allyson, Tami, and Heather explore what "meaningful use" actually looks like — filling out a job application, setting up multi-factor authentication, helping a kid with homework — and why Heather argues the same access-versus-skills gap that shaped broadband adoption is now reopening around AI. They dig into how Connected Nation builds community-specific technology action plans (including a look at Bastrop County, Texas), the Teens Teach Tech program that pays teenagers to train their own neighbors and grandparents, and the idea of "digital compassion" as a companion to AI literacy. Heather also previews Connected Nation's attempt at a Guinness World Record: 25 straight hours of live digital skills training across six continents to mark the organization's 25th anniversary. She closes with one of the more memorable answers the show has gotten to its closing question, using a rural Kentucky classroom's remote-controlled telescope to make the case for what distance learning is really for.

Key Topics:
  • Meaningful use vs. broadband access
  • The evolving definition of the digital divide
  • The emerging "AI divide"
  • Technology action plans and community readiness
  • Teens Teach Tech program
  • Digital compassion and AI safety
  • Connected Nation's 25-hour Guinness World Record livestream
Links & Resources:
Guest Bio: Heather Gate
Heather Gate is Executive Vice President of Digital Transformation at Connected Nation, where she has led digital inclusion strategy for nearly two decades, focusing on rural communities, minority populations, and other groups historically left behind by broadband access and digital skills gaps. She chairs the FCC's Communications Equity and Diversity Council and holds degrees in computer science and public administration from Kentucky State University.

About the Hosts
Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and a host of Why Distance Learning, a podcast for education leaders and practitioners making real decisions about how virtual learning gets designed, adopted, and sustained. Through Banyan, he designs live virtual programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators. See https://www.banyangloballearning.com/programs/global-cohorts

Allyson Mitchell and Tami Moehring are co-hosts of Why Distance Learning and members of the team at CILC — the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration — which connects students to real experts through live virtual field trips and experiences. See https://cilc.org

Creators and Guests

Host
Allyson Mitchell
SF
Host
Seth Fleischauer
TM
Host
Tami Moehring

What is Why Distance Learning??

Why Distance Learning? is a podcast about the decisions, design choices, and assumptions that determine whether live virtual learning becomes shallow and transactional—or meaningful, relational, and effective at scale.

The show is designed for education leaders, instructional designers, and system-level practitioners responsible for adopting, scaling, and sustaining virtual, hybrid, and online learning models. Each episode examines the structural conditions under which distance learning actually works—and the predictable reasons it fails when it doesn’t.

Through conversations with researchers, experienced practitioners, and field-shaping leaders, Why Distance Learning? translates research, field evidence, and lived experience into decision-relevant insight. Episodes surface real tradeoffs, near-failures, and hard-won lessons, equipping listeners with clear framing and language they can use to explain, defend, or redesign distance learning models in real organizational contexts.

Hosted by Seth Fleischauer of Banyan Global Learning, and Allyson Mitchell and Tami Moehring of the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration, the podcast challenges outdated narratives about distance learning and explores what becomes possible when live virtual education is designed intentionally, human-centered, and grounded in evidence.

# Why Distance Learning — Heather Gate (Connected Nation) — Clean Transcript

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## [INTRO — recorded separately]

**[00:00:00]**

Hello, and welcome to Why Distance Learning, the podcast for education leaders and practitioners who are making real decisions about how virtual learning gets designed, adopted, and sustained. I'm Seth Fleischauer, founder and president of Banyan Global Learning, and my cohosts are Allyson Mitchell and Tami Moehring of the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration. Every episode we try to surface at least one assumption worth questioning.

Our guest today is Heather Gate, Executive Vice President of Digital Transformation at Connected Nation, a national nonprofit that's spent 25 years working to close the digital divide. Heather has been with the organization for two decades, chairs the FCC's Communications Equity and Diversity Council, and this September she's leading Connected Nation's attempt at a Guinness World Record: 25 straight hours of live digital skills training, streamed globally, to mark the organization's 25th anniversary.

The assumption on the table today: that the digital divide is mainly a broadband access problem — get people connected, and the gap closes. Heather's twenty years of work say otherwise. She's watched the definition of the divide keep moving, from whether a community has internet at all, to whether people can afford it, to what she calls "meaningful use" — whether someone can actually fill out a job application, set up multi-factor authentication, or help their kid with homework once they're online. And she makes the case that AI is opening up the same gap all over again.

This episode is brought to you by CILC, the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration, connecting students to real experts through live virtual field trips and experiences — visit cilc.org to learn more. And by Banyan Global Learning, which brings K-12 classrooms face to face with global peers and expert facilitators through live, thematic international exchange programs — find them at banyangloballearning.com.

And now here's our conversation with Heather Gate.

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## [CONVERSATION]

**Allyson** [00:01] Yay! Thank you so much, Heather, for being here. We are really looking forward to diving into the conversation. So if it's okay, we wanted to get started with where you and I met. And that was when we got to connect about the 25 years you're going to be celebrating, which is super exciting and remarkable. And you're doing it in a really fun fashion — you're going to be creating a Guinness World Record for 25 hours of teaching people, having it all done live. So why was a live learning experience the right way to celebrate Connected Nation's twenty-fifth anniversary?

**Heather Gate** [00:12] Okay.

**Heather Gate** [00:25] Mm.

**Heather Gate** [00:38] Well, thank you, Allyson. We had a choice: have a party and go home, or do something really big. So we decided to do something big. We wanted it to recognize our mission of twenty-five years, which is advancing digital empowerment and digital opportunity. So we said, how can we do this? And really, with what's happening with AI right now, the proliferation of AI and the need for new skills, it just makes sense to connect the dots and do something big. We're a US-based nonprofit and most of our work has been in the US, though we have done stuff outside the US. But we said, digital empowerment is about connecting people — so why don't we connect them globally? That's how it came about. It was about bringing people together to have a conversation about digital skills, but actually teaching them practical digital skills they can take with them from different perspectives, not only in the US but globally. So that's how this came about. We can't do anything simple — we decided let's stay up for twenty-five hours.

**Seth** [02:03] As a little boy, the books I always bought first at the Scholastic Book Fair at school were the 600-page Guinness Book of World Records, and I would sit there and study it for the entire year until the next one came out. My favorites were the extra-long stretch limos, and the Spruce Goose was in there, which is actually here in Oregon — I can go see it now. What do you just call them? You're like, "Hey, I've got a thing" — has anyone done this before? Was twenty-four the previous record, and so you pick twenty-five? How does that work?

**Heather Gate** [02:44] It gets worse — the record doesn't exist, so we could have done two hours. We're setting the record. I basically stalked them, okay — I filled out forms over four months, like please, we really — and then finally somebody said, okay, fine, what do you want to do?

**Tami Moehring** [02:52] But you're setting a really high bar, Heather, so you don't have to worry about anyone else breaking it.

**Seth** [~02:54] Ha ha ha.

**Heather Gate** [~02:59] Because you can't fill out the standard form — the standard form is intended for individuals, so it didn't work for us. We had to go through a different channel, filling out kind of a random form. I kept doing it and they wouldn't respond to me, and then eventually I got a response. So we went through what we wanted to do. And the great news is they've started a new category called Record for Good — that's for organizations doing social impact. So we're not going to be up next to the hot dog eaters.

**Seth** [~03:41] Cool.

**Heather Gate** [~03:52] We're going to be that tier.

**Tami Moehring** [~03:53] I was just gonna ask, are you gonna submit for a world record for the most amount of time it took you to get your application recognized by the Guinness?

**Heather Gate** [~04:00] Yes, yes, yes — it's really good. It was a very interesting experience. Once they say okay, fine, we start working on the details and the requirements they give you for what will qualify. We can't go below twenty-five hours, so we have a backup plan for the backup plan. We also have to have at least fifty people watching at all times, and we have five minutes to fix it if the number goes below fifty. So they give us those kinds of credentials — I think they give us some leeway for technical issues because we're dealing with organizations on six continents, where connectivity is a bit different. So we have backup plans and staff ready to pick up if something goes off — somebody else will start teaching a topic, like what happens when the power goes out.

**Seth** [~04:56] Do you have approximately fifty staff ready to keep watching, maybe?

**Allyson** [~04:58] I know — I was gonna say, do you have people placed?

**Heather Gate** [~05:00] Well, the good news is we do digital skills training, so we have curriculum to lean on — we're not starting from scratch. It's probably not going to be as dynamic as the training that's going to come from Argentina, but we have internal curriculum and trainers ready to roll — every set, there's somebody sitting in the studio, mic'ed up and ready to go.

**Allyson** [~05:48] Yeah.

**Seth** [~05:48] Well, it sounds like an amazing event. When we hear about the digital divide, oftentimes what we focus on is broadband access — can you sign on to the internet? But you think about it as something more than that. What are we missing when we only think about the digital divide as broadband access?

**Heather Gate** [~06:21] I think that sometimes when we think about the digital divide, we're thinking about the lack of access to infrastructure — do you have access to high-speed broadband? But the challenge is much deeper and more complicated than that. It evolves. I'll tell you — I've been with Connected Nation for twenty years, and when I first started, the challenge was that people didn't even know what high-speed internet was.

**Allyson** [~06:50] Mm-hmm.

**Heather Gate** [~06:51] Right? We were defining what broadband was, defining what internet was and why they needed it. Some of the first projects we worked on were convincing small towns and rural communities why they needed a website — and this was twenty years ago. Things change so fast, and now it feels like they've always been there. So one, the digital divide is always evolving. It also varies by where you are — where you live geographically. Mostly when you go to rural areas, you can define the digital divide based on infrastructure: people don't even have access, so you can't even begin to talk about skills and meaningful use when they don't have access. On the other side of the spectrum, you can go to more urban communities where fiber is 100% available, but people can't afford it — that's a digital divide. Or they don't have meaningful skills, or don't know how to use it meaningfully. You'll hear me talk about this a lot: meaningful use — not just being able to navigate social media and post things. Can you do the things that move you from one spot to the other? If you're an older adult, can you communicate with your family effectively? Because older adults in nursing homes — there are mental health implications to being able to keep in contact with people. If you're a student, can you do the things your school requires you to do to progress your education? If you're an adult, do you know how to do a resume? I'm still blown away — I'll tell you, about four or five months ago we were doing some digital skills training and device distributions. These people had just received devices, and part of the class is setting up the device. You've got multi-factor authentication, and it requires you to check for a code. How many of those people said, "I need to call my daughter, I need to call my son," because they don't have an email address and use their child's email address? I can't fathom existing without an email address — everything I do requires me to use my email, follow up through my email. But that's the reality: in the United States we're still dealing with people experiencing the digital divide — the ever-evolving digital divide.

**Seth** [~09:47] Yeah, I really like that framing of meaningful use. What I'm hearing is meaningful use is essentially use that provides access to opportunity. One of the things we talk about all the time on this podcast is how this technology can be used to provide opportunity, provide access. As you say, the digital divide is constantly evolving — so are the things that provide opportunity. Just because a certain skill provides opportunity today doesn't mean it will tomorrow. How do you stay on top of what you're teaching people to make sure it's the right skills for today?

**Heather Gate** [~10:32] Well, people ask me why I've been with Connected Nation for twenty years, and I tell them it's because my job changes every few years. Every time a new technology comes along, we have a responsibility to really dive into it. Part of what we do too is research — we keep up with the implications of this new technology. Sometimes we have to deliver bad news to people, because it's always a temptation to celebrate. A good example: when mobile devices took over and became smartphones, people came out and said, "Yay, we solved the digital divide — all those communities left behind are the fastest consumers of mobile devices." But you know what we discovered? A lot of those people having a phone as the primary source of high-speed internet in the household was not a solution. You have a household with three kids, a mom and dad — your phone is not going to help kids do homework and write papers. Your phone's not going to help you get a job. And the United States was never really built to be as mobile-friendly as we think we are — try filling out a PDF on a phone, doesn't go very well. Try filling in a lot of government forms on a phone, doesn't work. And you know what our turning point was? COVID. We realized a lot of families had mobile devices. So going back to the point — some of what we have to do as organizations that bridge the digital divide is keep our finger on reality, and break people's hearts when they start celebrating too soon. The digital divide just changed when mobile devices came — people figured out how to use Facebook, but it just transitioned. These are still the barriers and challenges people experience.

**Allyson** [~13:14] And you've been talking about the digital divide and digital inclusion for a really long time — well before the 2020 digital pivot, I like to call it — because you wrote something in 2019, doing research before we chatted, and you talked about people being excluded from education and communication and opportunity because they couldn't fully participate in the world. What have we learned since then about what it actually takes to make people meaningfully use those experiences?

**Heather Gate** [~13:43] I always tell people everyone has a role to play, because it's easy for people to say it's the responsibility of the tech companies. I got that a lot when I first started — when I would apply for foundation money for reading, for writing, people would say, "Go to Google, why don't you go to the tech companies?" And I'm like, no, actually it affects your mission to advance reading too, because if you're not ensuring kids can access books and literature and museums electronically everywhere, you're restricting their world as well. So I think what it's taken is everybody recognizing their role. There's policy — policy needs to prioritize access, but also affordability, so people can subscribe. If you deploy infrastructure and nobody in the community can afford it, that's a problem. And then us as nonprofits — our role is to be a conduit between policymakers and the hyperscalers, the technology companies, the broadband providers, and translate that language and what meaningful use is. One of our biggest priorities is empowering other organizations, because Connected Nation is a small nonprofit — how do we reach millions of people? We create partnerships in local communities, and we provide them with information and translate complicated broadband policy into something they understand that can help them advance their missions. Our mission is not to advance technology — it's to advance life and opportunity through different organizations and pathways.

**Seth** [~15:52] Can you give us a success story there? An example of an organization you worked with, where you were able to translate this complicated language and help empower their goals, and in doing so also further your own?

**Heather Gate** [~16:07] Yeah — when it comes to communities, we've worked with about 650 communities across multiple states, but I'll point out Texas specifically. What we help them do is create their own technology action plans. Technology action plans begin with assessing where that community is — they have to define their own digital divide. What are the challenges in your community? Once we collect that data, we assess households for adoption, barriers to adoption, and skills, and we also assess government, businesses, and different sectors within that community to understand their needs and challenges. Then the plan comes up with recommended actions — you need investment in infrastructure, you need more digital skills training, and what are the low-hanging fruit? Well, the library has digital skills training that nobody knows about. It's really bringing the community together with the different sectors to assess where the low-hanging fruit is and where the needs are. One county I think of is Bastrop County in Texas — we did an assessment for them, and a technical assessment. Bastrop County is really thriving now — they're implementing digital skills and workforce development projects that came out of that plan and are now part of the community. They do it in English and Spanish. They're helping advance jobs in that community. The other success story: we partnered with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation years ago to go to rural libraries with broadband speeds under five meg — small rural libraries. Part of the events we hosted was training these libraries on how to transform internet policy into something built into their strategic planning, because before, people treated broadband like nice-to-have infrastructure — how do you make that part of your plan? Today, libraries are front and center of where people go in communities when they need internet access. They're also the tech support for everyone in the community — when people have challenges or need to fill out a form, they ask the librarians, and librarians bear a tremendous amount of burden for that. And then we have individual stories from people we've networked with who give us feedback on how it's changed their lives — we have data showing, for example, that older adults who've gone through our training programs, the number one thing they value most is connection, making connections and community. For younger people, it's work and school — those are the number one things people get out of these programs.

**Seth** [~19:53] So it feels like you could go into any given community, do this assessment, and find a certain amount of digital divide. You have strategies and success stories that have addressed those specific problems, and tools to bring people together and train people up and connect. How do you decide who to work with?

**Heather Gate** [~20:15] Typically we work with communities based on where the funding is, really. The work we did in Texas was funded by the Texas Rural Funders, a group of foundations that wanted us to help prepare Texas communities — Texas rural communities — for all the infrastructure investment that was coming in. They gave us money to do this across Texas. We do use data to determine where the most need is in Texas — that's how we identified communities. But another important factor is community readiness. Believe it or not, we still stumble on communities that say, "No, we have other problems — we have water and other things to fix." Community readiness means they have to have a vision for themselves in order for a strategic plan to be developed. If they don't have the vision, they're not ready — and sometimes they become ready when they see their neighbor getting ready, so it's not about abandoning them, it's letting them see what others are doing and saying, "We're coming." So usually it's based on partnership with funding entities and where the priorities are. We've done some with federal funding too — with federal funding it's more about the state; they're targeting the state or a region. We wish we had funding that would let us go some places on our own, but unfortunately it's usually funded via foundations, and we have to adhere to their priorities.

**Allyson** [~22:16] Well, now we know why you're so able to fill out those Guinness World Record forms and keep it going — because I'm sure working with all the different foundations, there's all different types of things you have to fill out and adhere to, so I know there'll be no problem there with the 25-hour experience. But you have such a unique perspective too, because you get to work with these communities so intimately, but then you've also been able to sit in leadership roles at a policy level — that gives you so many perspectives to bring into conversation. What have you learned from working on both levels that policymakers sometimes don't see right away, because they're not having those intimate conversations or don't have the opportunity to work as closely as you do with communities?

**Heather Gate** [~23:14] It's actually very interesting — I live in Kentucky, and I chaired a committee at the FCC, the Communications Equity and Diversity Council. The goal of the council was to provide the FCC with recommendations on issues related to smaller communities that might be left behind. The committee consisted of people from rural, urban, and disability communities — it was very representative of smaller groups in the states. But the majority of people on those committees were DC-based. So I got to be part of that and offer a different perspective — I was like, "That's great that you all want to do an electronic survey, but you're dealing with a region where people don't have computers." It's understandable — policymakers have to work at a macro level, thinking about how to make policies that serve the country. At the same time, there has to be a balance with listening to communities, because the experience is very different when you actually go into communities. We've had broadband for a long time — my daughter was moving a mouse around at two years old in 2003, she knew how to use a mouse efficiently. It's often hard for people to envision that some people are still struggling with email. I found my role was to be that voice — okay, let's talk about what's really happening in the community. One of my favorite things was that the FCC allowed us to host events, and by hosting events we created a platform that allowed people to come and speak for themselves. We had people from US territories, from Appalachia here in Kentucky, come and be the voice of what it's like for the rest of the country. So bringing those two things together — understanding that policy has to be at a macro level, but also meeting the reality of what's actually happening in the country — was a very interesting challenge, and one I very much appreciated. And I appreciated doing it from Kentucky, because that was jarring to them — "You're from Kentucky?" Yes, people live in Kentucky.

**Allyson** [~25:59] Ha ha.

**Tami Moehring** [~26:00] Ha ha ha.

**Allyson** [~26:03] Yeah.

**Seth** [~26:06] When you have all these conversations, you essentially have your ear to the ground, and I imagine you see a lot of things coming before the policymakers who are looking at it from 10,000 feet — that's their role. But I imagine you have a perspective where you're able to see the future a little better than other people might. What are you seeing right now? What do you think the digital divide will evolve into?

**Heather Gate** [~26:42] We're in the middle of the evolution of the AI divide. A lot of conversations around AI are on the employer perspective, different types of perspectives — but I think what it eventually translates to is: people learning how to use AI are learning new skills that make them a little more efficient and competitive in what they do. And we're not talking about abusing AI, just whipping up a document — but knowing how to interact with AI in a way that makes you more impressive, that makes you better. That's real — I'm blown away by how much time I'm saving on some tasks now. I was doing an assessment of a previous project that would have taken me days to read through multiple documents. I was able to, in a couple of hours, generate an impressive report and a presentation that I gave to my boss for an internal conversation about a previous project. And that starts to transform who's more capable of meaningful use of AI in advancing their employment opportunities — because there's a lot of conversation about people losing jobs because of AI, but not enough conversation about AI-savvy people getting ahead in job opportunities. Again, I'm talking about meaningful use of AI, because nothing's worse than bad use of AI. At a conference I'm like, this is an AI speech — I can hear all the linguistics of an AI speech. That's not great, when you come out sounding like AI, because it's very obvious. But how do we translate those types of skills in a way that advances life for our target audience of foundational digital-skills learners? One of the things I'm arguing is that the AI divide is not going to be separate from the digital skills divide — if somebody is just now learning how to use email, they're further behind on this too. So the divide for them is a little more difficult. But there are opportunities — how do we leverage AI itself as a tool to teach digital skills? That's an opportunity. The AI divide is definitely the next thing I see as the next digital divide.

**Seth** [~29:44] And that seems like a more complicated one than the ones you've dealt with up until this point. There's something binary about a lot of the skills you're talking about — you either have the skill or you don't. AI introduces the potential complication where someone more vulnerable, someone with a lower level of achievement, might actually be harmed by the use of AI, because they're bypassing their own cognition to produce something that looks good, but they never actually did the learning. Do you have any perspective on timing — about how and when and to whom AI skills are taught?

**Heather Gate** [~30:25] That's a hard question to answer. I was just looking at an application we did less than two years ago — AI wasn't even a factor. Two years ago. Now we're so immersed in it, it feels like we've been in it for a long time. We haven't — we've been in it for a little over twelve months now. It's moving fast. I don't know if the dangers of AI are any more than the dangers of the internet that have always existed — that's another thing we're responsible for, and I'm very passionate about internet safety, making sure people have the skills. The other thing we're working on is a topic called digital compassion — really talking about how you interact online and the implications of that. During the 25 hours we're going to be launching our first "what is digital compassion" and Connected Nation's call to action for how people interact. We have a responsibility to ensure people are equipped to use the internet and AI in a way that's safe and responsible, and understand the dangers to themselves — it would be irresponsible to send people out without the tools they need. Right now we've been doing some AI pilots, and ethical and responsible use is a big part of it — this is what AI is, this is why, this is what you need to be aware of, this is how you protect your own information. Same as you should with the telephone, with people trying to steal information via phone, internet, text message, everywhere. I don't know about the dangers of AI on the other side — that's a whole conversation, on bias and the dangers of it being fed information that spreads things we don't want spread. That's a different conversation. But from a user perspective, we have a responsibility to make sure people understand that you can't always trust what you read or what you get from AI.

**Allyson** [~33:26] I love the term digital compassion — when we first met, you and I spoke about that, and I've been thinking about it every day since. Just how great that term is. I'm really looking forward to your class. I know we're coming to the end of our time, but digital compassion came out of a conversation about your Teens Teach Tech program — you at Connected Nation have so many wonderful programs, and your 25-hour livestream needs 50 people at each hour, so we're going to help spread the word. I wonder if you could give a quick preview into Teens Teach Tech and your other programs, and maybe a little glimpse of the schedule — we'll link everything in the show notes, but just so we can hear a bit about the interactivity before we end our time together.

**Heather Gate** [34:16] Yes, so Teens Teach Tech, we're really proud of it. It's a program where we empower teenagers to become digital navigators, digital skills trainers in their own community. We give them a little bit of startup money, and then they earn financial incentives for everyone they help in their community. We give them some basic foundational curriculum, but then they can customize the training to solve a local problem. For example, a few weeks ago, one group of teens partnered with their school system to train parents on how to use the new school app. The other thing I love is that the teens discovered they can really help senior centers — we have a very large percentage of our students who partner with senior centers and go train there. Some of them just train their own families. One of my favorite pictures is a student at home with family members sitting in the living room, and the teenager training them on internet safety on TV. I was like, my god, I love this — grandma, grandpa, all sitting there.

**Heather Gate** [35:07] But they get to be as creative as they want with their program. The other thing we've learned through Teens Teach Tech is the teens aren't as tech-savvy as we think they are — they know how to use devices, they know how to TikTok and Snapchat or whatever the kids are doing these days, but schools aren't teaching typing classes anymore, they're just skipping over it. Teens go into the workforce and don't know how to type fast because it was never taught to them. Or basic things like a new PDF or document — they don't know how to do those things, because there's this assumption it's happening for them naturally. So they're learning too — they come back and say, "Nobody ever told me about internet safety, can you believe it?" They're just learning about basic things, like what a secure website looks like. So it's a learning curve for them too, being part of it — but it was very eye-opening to see that teens aren't getting everything they need to be prepared for the workforce.

**Tami Moehring** [~37:04] I'd love to get us focused for our last question. Before we do, I want to say thank you, Heather — I love your perspective on digital compassion, but also your little slap of reality about what it's really like. I love that. And thinking of that, we've discussed so many topics, but why distance learning? It's the question we ask every single guest — it's the name of our podcast, but why distance learning?

**Heather Gate** [37:46] I think distance learning is one of the things that — in all the work I did, and I started doing a lot of my work in rural areas in Appalachia — I came to appreciate that people want to be where they want to be. I think distance learning gives people a sense of freedom. You can live where you want and access information from wherever. One of the first things we worked on was a project with a partner doing remote instrumentation, where kids could control a telescope and see things in the sky — kids in the middle of nowhere, Kentucky, had the opportunity to do these cool things. So I think the freedom it gives people to choose where they want to live — you know, gone are the days where people have to move because they have to go somewhere else to give their kids opportunities. Now you can live where you want, and as long as you have a connection, you can decide the different things your kid can access, or experience, like remote instruments — kids at certain times could see whatever was happening in the sky and control that telescope from somewhere remote, and learn with others. One of my dreams for Teens Teach Tech is going global — I would love the teens here to mentor teens in another country, learn about what it's like, and share information on training adults and connecting with adults. So distance learning is a game changer for us. It's a game changer for the world — the ability to access resources, be where you want to be, and access what you want to access.

**Seth** [~39:46] We are eighty-nine episodes in, and that is the first time anyone's framed it like that. Fantastic answer — thank you. Heather, thank you so much for being here today. Where can our listeners find your work on the internet?

**Heather Gate** [~39:58] Thank you. Connectednation.org — you'll find information there, including on the 25 hours. It's hour-long segments; we don't expect anyone to sit there for 25 hours like us, but there are exciting topics — scams, all kinds of AI topics, healthy habits. So you can go find those. And Teens Teach Tech is still enrolling — if you're a youth-serving organization, fill out the interest form, we'll call you within 48 hours and see if it's a good match. That's really our model — partnering with people far and wide. That's how Allyson and I connected — such a small world.

**Seth** [~41:02] That is September 24th and 25th, and we will definitely have information in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here.

**Heather Gate** [~41:08] Thank you so much. I really appreciate the time, and I appreciate everything you all do for distance learning, because I'm really passionate about it.

**Allyson** [~41:17] Yay, thank you.

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## [OUTRO — recorded separately]

That's a wrap on our conversation with Heather Gate.

What stood out to me is how many times the definition of "the digital divide" has shifted under Heather in the twenty years she's been doing this work — from whether a town has broadband, to whether a household can afford it, to whether someone knows how to set up two-factor authentication without calling their kid. She made a strong case that AI literacy is the next version of that same gap, and that meaningful use, not just access, is the thing worth measuring.

I also liked hearing how that plays out on the ground — the technology action plans Connected Nation builds with communities like Bastrop County, Texas, and the Teens Teach Tech program, where teenagers get paid to train their own neighbors, parents, and grandparents. We'll have links to Connected Nation's work, Teens Teach Tech, and details on the 25-hour livestream event in the show notes.

Thanks for listening to Why Distance Learning, and we'll see you next time.