Sixth Tech Day Full of Hands-On Telecom Activities
April 2007

Tech Day at NATCO this year found the South Shore Marion County Youth Leadership Team having “hands-on” activities as they spent a business day with NATCO department managers. Visiting NATCO were 20 ninth grade students and six advisors from Flippin, Yellville-Summit, and Bruno-Pyatt schools.

During the school year, the youth leadership team meets each month to focus on topics including local and state governments, the economy, developing leadership qualities, and teamwork. A graduation reception is held at the close of the school year to honor the 21-member team, made up of seven students from each school.  

“Based on the comments and genuine interest expressed by the participating students and faculty, the platform change of Tech Day was the right decision,” said Steven Sanders Jr., vice president of NATCO.

NATCO hoped the hands-on activities would generate more interest in technology and make the students think more about their academic futures, Sanders said, and he believed that goal was accomplished.

With Customer Service Supervisor Melissa Merkel, students learned how to research DSL Internet availability and how to pay their bill online. With Dispatcher Cathy Callen, students looked up their own telephone number or locations of their homes.

In the Internet division, NATCO Technologies, students worked with Supervisor Larry May and Internet Services Rep. Lorene James to “build” a virtual car or truck they would want to purchase by consulting Web sites of auto makers and researching pricing on new and used vehicles.

In engineering, Monica Osborn, dispatcher, and Doug Smith, resident engineer, helped students to find a location or draw a new facility using the Sapience360 SpatialENGINEER CAD engineering tool.

Larry Barber, in the installation and repair department, showed students how to troubleshoot a phone line and gave a close-up view of fiber optic cable, explaining how it works.

David White in accounting showed students the importance of saving money for retirement, presenting different results based on a person’s education, age when savings began, and the amount regularly saved.

The half-day ended with a competition among groups to prepare a short skit after studying the topic Know the FACTS about Phones, emphasizing the advantages of land lines. Steven Sanders Jr. and Danielle Sanders presented guidelines for the skits and awarded prizes to the winners. Students also recommended what phone services they would include in a pack of services for different age groups.

NATCO is a family-owned, independent telephone company located at 301 E. Main St., Flippin, AR 72634. It provides telephone service to six exchanges in Marion and Boone Counties: Bull Shoals, Diamond City, Flippin, Lead Hill, Omaha and Pyatt. Its NATCO Technologies division provides Internet services throughout northern Arkansas and southern Missouri. For more information, call toll-free 1-800-775-6682 or visit the company’s Web sites at www.NatcoNet.com, or www.NatcoTech.com.