BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Frank Odasz, M.A., President and CEO, Lone Eagle Consulting, Dillon, Montana

Born in Cody, Wyoming, in 1952, Frank Odasz has been a carpenter, oil field roughneck, dude ranch manager, college professor and is now a “Lone Eagle” – that is, an independent instructional entrepreneur living on a ranch eight miles southwest of Dillon, Montana. Modeling western individualism by pioneering the electronic frontier, Frank is living proof the Internet can be used to allow rural citizens to retain their cherished rural lifestyle. Lone Eagle Consulting champions the cause of creating more rural Lone Eagles able to live and work anywhere they choose.

In 1982 Frank attended the University of Wyoming to learn the benefits that computers and telecommunications could bring to rural citizens. As one of the early pioneers of both online learning and community networking, he founded the Big Sky Telegraph network in 1988. This was one of the first online systems to offer online courses for rural educators in over one hundred one-room schoolhouses in Montana. He directed this program until 1998.

Frank served on the founding boards for both the Consortium for School Networking and the Association for Community Networking. Frank has been a very popular presenter providing rural community workshops for the Kellogg “Managing Information in Rural America” project, workshops for educators for the International Thinkquest Competition, CTCnet national conferences, AFCN-cosponsored community networking conferences, and has advised on grant applications for the Hewlett Packard Digital Village initiative, as well as U.S. Dept. of Ed. Office of Migrant Education technology projects.

In 2002, he created Rural Ecommerce and Telework Strategies as a non-credit first online course specifically for rural learners. Currently over 40 rural adults, and 20 Athabascan High School youth are enrolled in the Rural Ecommerce course. Frank has been the keynote speaker for the Rural Workforce national conference three years in a row and for many other Ecommerce conferences including the National Native American Employment and Training conference, 2003. Additional Ecommerce presentations are listed at http://lone-eagles.com/new.htm .

Frank has been teaching rural citizens and teachers consecutively since 1988. Among the other online courses he has created are Classroom Collaboration on the Internet; Mentoring Online; How to Create and Teach an Online Class; Making the Best Use of Internet for K-12 Instruction; and Designing Online Curriculum for K-12 Instruction. Frank teaches online graduate courses for Alaska Pacific University, Seattle Pacific University and the non-credit Ecommerce course for Idaho State University.

Specializing in fast-track Internet training for rural, remote, and indigenous learners for the last 20 years, Frank has traveled over half a million miles presenting at national and international conferences on online learning, community networking, and rural Ecommerce. Frank has diverse experience working with Alaskan villages and rural communities. Frank’s work has been recognized for excellence by four congressional reports, the White House, and dozens of books and publications. Resume: http://lone-eagles.com/articles/frank.htm

An Internet search for “Frank Odasz” or “Big Sky Telegraph” or “Lone Eagle Consulting” and a review of the original and collected resources at http://lone-eagles.com/ will give a quick idea of the extent of experience and resources Lone Eagle consulting brings to this project. And of the extent of the national and international impact of ongoing sharing of these unique resources.

Lone Eagle will provide unrestricted use of all previously developed curriculum and resources which are documented as a direct result from $30,000 of specific contracts. Frank Odasz will serve as master trainer providing key presentations, workshops, online training and mentoring, as well as co-administering the project.

A 20 page history of Frank Odasz written for a book as a history of online learning from a rural perspective
is at http://lone-eagles.com/history.htm