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22 Liberty Street Meriden, CT 06450 (203) 238-3209
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History In 1970, the Board of Education of Cheshire, Meriden, Southington, Wallingford and Wolcott initiated discussions about the feasibility of a regional approach to reducing growing costs for audio-visual services. As a result of these discussions, RAVE (Regional Audio Video Education) was created. In 1972 RAVE applied for and recieved a Connecticut Department of Education Grant to establish a film library. With this initial seed money RAVE was able to establish a regional film and video library of over 2,000 titles. By 1976, there was a growing shift and emphasis upon the use of video in education. It was in response to this need that Cable RAVE was established. The purpose of Cable RAVE was to repair video-equiptment, create video programming for schools, edit video tapes and provide programming for the educational access channel. By the year 1980 the RAVE Board of Directors recognized the need to incorporate the services of the two separate groups into one organization, RAVE. As a result of this unification, member towns received increased video services, and the film library was converted to VHS video format. The RAVE organization was growing, adding the Portland School District to the RAVE Compact. By the year 1985, computer technology began to play a larger role in the planning of the RAVE member districts. Increasingly large amounts of money were being expanded for computer technology by the districts. The RAVE Board of Directors responded to this need by hiring and training a full time computer technician. RAVE had become a fully authorized Apple Repair Center. In the following years many towns switched from the Apple format to PC format; the member towns of RAVE could not agree upon a single platform or operating system. Computer repair and service had become too complex an issue to solve regionally. By the year 1994, several of the RAVE member towns believed it necessary to spend more of their technology budget upon computer services within their own districts, creating their own Instructional Technology Deptartments. As a result of this thinking, Chesire and Wallingford left the RAVE Compact and the East Hampton School District joined the RAVE Compact. By the year 2000, the RAVE Board of Directors believed that it must carefully scrutinize and proactively review the fiscal commitment to its member towns. To this end, RAVE reorganized some of its services and personnel. It was agreed that RAVE will continue to repair all audio-visual, television and video equiptment, and will continue its management of the video library including tape duplication in both foreign and American format, off-air taping and the editing of tapes. In addition, RAVE will outsource some of the cabling and wiring issues of the member communities and will serve as an audio-visual resource for its member communities. In the past 30 years RAVE has served as a valuable resource for its member communites. It continutes to grow and to adapt to the different changes in various technologies. It has never lost sight of its primary mission, to provide quality audio-visual services to its member districts in a timely and cost effective manner.
Rudolph L. Cabata
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