HiFusion Launches in 220 School Districts Nationwide Creating School-to-Home Online Communities; Compaq Computer Corporation, the National Urban League on Board as Launch Partners

Business Wire, July 26, 2000

Business Editors & High Tech Writers

MCLEAN, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 26, 2000

HiFusion (www.hifusion.com), a dynamic new media company offering free Internet access and filtered, bilingual user-specific content and communications tools for kids, parents and teachers, officially launched today. HiFusion will roll out this fall in 220 school districts reaching 7.5 million households in such areas as New York City, Salt Lake City, Dallas, San Antonio and Los Angeles, ensuring young people nationwide have the chance to benefit from opportunities the Internet offers for learning, career advancement and recreation. Compaq Computer Corporation and The National Urban League have joined the effort as launch partners.

HiFusion is led by pioneering education and senior executives from companies including Scholastic, Kaplan, Netscape, Yahoo! and Discovery.com. HiFusion CEO Ira Fishman was the founding CEO of the Schools and Libraries Corporation and was responsible for administering the national E-rate program that has already connected over a million classrooms to the Internet.

"Every day, students leave our school buildings full of excitement about what they have learned in their Internet-enhanced classrooms," said Ira Fishman, CEO of HiFusion. "We must make the connection to the home and between parents, teachers and students. HiFusion exists to give our children and their families the ability to access technology and acquire skills to leverage the power of the Internet in their lives."

The HiFusion program will connect local learning communities by reaching tens of millions of students, parents and teachers. Starting this summer, HiFusion will launch a training program, dubbed HiFusion Internet University, for these targeted groups. This program will roll out in key school districts nationwide. Additionally, twenty-one of the HiFusion Internet Universities will be part of HUD's Empowerment Zone/Enterprise Communities initiative as announced by Vice President Gore.

In his announcement, Gore commented, "Empowerment is also about spurring private sector investments. Today I am pleased to announce that HiFusion will launch an Internet University in twenty-one urban empowerment zones over the next three years. It will train 23,000 parents, teachers, community leaders and students--putting a vast world of knowledge and discovery available through the Internet into thousands of hands."

As a HiFusion launch partner, Compaq will offer, at a special price, a loaded multi-media machine with monitor preloaded with free HiFusion Internet access - just one of the benefits to families who participate in the program.

"Compaq is delighted to be a part of this groundbreaking effort," said Mike Larson, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Compaq's Consumer Products Group. "HiFusion is clearly the leader at this critical intersection of education and technology. Our work with HiFusion helps us realize one of our company's most important goals--making technology accessible to the entire education community."

The National Urban League and its 115 affiliates will work with HiFusion on a number of efforts for youths and adults to access and utilize all forms of information and communication technologies.

"It's clear that HiFusion will be one of the essential resources available to families, enabling them to enjoy the benefits of the information age," said Milton Little, COO of the National Urban League. "HiFusion provides the missing link to our technology programs and we are very pleased to have discovered them."

HiFusion's Leadership

HiFusion's veteran management team has years of experience working in tandem with school leaders to proliferate the use of technology in schools. This team includes:

-- Ira Fishman, CEO, founding CEO of the Schools and Libraries

Corporation, and served on the Federal Communications

Commission as Special Counsel and Director of the Task Force

on Education as well as at the White House as Deputy Assistant

to the President for Legislative Affairs;

-- John Bell, Vice President of User Experience, who most

recently served as the visionary creative director of

Discovery.com, has extensive experience launching successful

Web products, CD-ROMs and Interactive Television projects with

great brands including Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, Gateway,

MTV, Cablevision and others;

-- Andrew Connors, Vice President, Chief Architect, who most

recently served as a principal consultant for Netscape

Communications where he was the east coast regional lead

designer for Portal Architecture;

-- Mickey Revenaugh, Vice President of Education, who helped

launch the Schools and Libraries Corporation's E-rate program

as vice president for outreach and served as editor-in-chief

of Electronic Learning, Teaching and Computers, Instructor,

Middle Years and America's Agenda magazines while at

Scholastic Inc;

-- Linda Reynolds-Hochertz, Vice President, Sales, who spent more

than four years at Yahoo! as a regional marketing manager and

was instrumental in hiring and training sales teams and