Bell Atlantic Awards Grants to Five West Virginia Schools

Bell Atlantic Awards Grants to Five West Virginia
Schools

Moneys to Help Teachers Harness Power of Internet

May 26, 1998

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Teachers at schools in Barbour, Cabell,
Kanawha, Lincoln and Mingo counties will receive grants from the Bell
Atlantic® WORLD SCHOOL® Grant Program to help them use the global
resources of the Internet for education. Bell Atlantic - West Virginia will
distribute $50,000 in grants from the Bell Atlantic Foundation for this
effort this year.

The latest grant winners include Belington Elementary School (Barbour
County), Cabell Midland High School (Cabell County), Capital High
School (Kanawha County), Harts High School (Lincoln County) and
Lenore Middle School (Mingo County).

"Hats off to these schools! They're finding creative ways to harness the
power of the Internet for education," said Dennis Bone, president and CEO
of Bell Atlantic - West Virginia.

Belington Elementary students will use the Internet to produce maps of the
Hawaiian Islands and develop a timeline of the Hawaiian monarchy. Using
the Internet, they will also develop an exhibit of birds and animals
indigenous to the islands, as well as a bulletin board display of Hawaiian
elementary schools and their students.

Cabell Midland High School students will create a home page for the
school's Technology Education Department.

Capital High School will collaborate with Harts High School, using the
Internet, to learn more about DNA fingerprinting and solve a staged
murder mystery. The students will research the various techniques of DNA
separation used in forensic science.

Lenore Middle School students will develop an instructional web site with
information on nearby Laurel Lake, its ecosystem and the lake's
importance to the community's quality of life. Students will research lakes
in general using the Internet. They will also post on the Internet the results
of scientific experiments conducted at Laurel Lake, along with math
problems and essays on the subject.

Educators can learn more about these and other projects by accessing the
WORLD SCHOOL site on the World Wide Web. The Web address for
WORLD SCHOOL is [http://www.bellatlantic.com/wschool].

The WORLD SCHOOL Grant Program complements Bell Atlantic's
WORLD SCHOOL project, through which nearly 700 public schools in the
company's service area now have high-speed digital Internet access.
Teachers in all public and private schools served by Bell Atlantic-West
Virginia are eligible to submit applications for the WORLD SCHOOL
grant program.

The company awards individual WORLD SCHOOL grants of up to
$4,000. A panel of education leaders and Bell Atlantic employees judges
all grant proposals. Grant money cannot be used to purchase tariffed
telephone services or hardware, such as computer monitors, hard disk
drives, printers or liquid crystal display (LCD) panels.

Educators can obtain applications on the WORLD SCHOOL grants
program by calling the Bell Atlantic-West Virginia public relations office at
1-800-642-8206.

The Bell Atlantic Foundation supports a variety of projects domestically
and internationally, with an emphasis on new technology applications in
education, health and human services, the arts and humanities, and civic
development in the communities served by Bell Atlantic. For more
information, visit www.bellatlanticfoundation.com on the Internet.

Bell Atlantic is at the forefront of the new communications and information
industry. With 41.4 million telephone access lines and 6.7 million wireless
customers worldwide, Bell Atlantic companies are premier providers of
advanced wireline voice and data services, market leaders in wireless
services and the world's largest publishers of directory information. Bell
Atlantic are also among the world's largest investors in high-growth global
communications markets, with operations and investments in 22 countries.