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The Southeast (South Dakota) Interactive Long Distance Learning (SILDL) consortium is made up of fourteen school districts, Children's Care Hospital and School, and the University of South Dakota School of Education.

After seven years of successful delivery of distance learning and training services to rural schools, the technology backbone was aging and the communications protocol threatened to become prohibitively expensive.

Through a US Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Utilities Service (RUS) program, the SILDL and their fiscal sponsor, the Southeast Area Cooperative, applied for and received $500,000 for new IP-based network and classroom equipment.

In addition to rescuing continuing services for existing consortium members and their students, the grant-funded equipment will allow the consortium to expand its membership, increase and diversify the course offerings it provides, make new community-based offerings available to nontraditional students and other adults living in rural communities, and even provide distance learning to individual students in their homes. The audiences and courses are now limited only by the Internet.

Dr. Dean Lindstrom, Director of the Southeast Area Cooperative, sums up the consultation and application preparation work Sumption & Wyland performed with the consortium members: ”It was a total team effort and I guess that is what it takes.”

Congratulations to the SILDL on a successful history and bright future!